Athina Rachel Tsangari is probably not a ubiquitous name just yet, though odds are she is on her way to being a staple of Greek cinema. As a producer, Tsangari has been involved in some of the most exciting movies from the country in recent years, including working on “Dogtooth” with Yorgos Lanthimos and “Before Midnight” with Richard Linklater (which, while not entirely a Greek production, was filmed in Messenia, Greece). And as a director, Tsangari has quickly established herself as an idiosyncratic voice to be watched. Her second film “Attenberg” won Ariane Labed the Coppa Volpi award from the Venice Film Festival.
Now Tsangari is back with her third feature, the satirical buddy comedy “Chevalier,” and today sees the arrival of the first U.S. trailer. The film, which we caught at TIFF last year when it made it’s North American premier, follows a group of men on a fishing trip on a yacht in the Aegean Sea as they spiral into the clutches of a surreal game. The objective — while incredibly simple: to prove who is “The Best In General” — is exceedingly aberrant. The men are collectively in charge of assigning points to each other, which they do for everything from cholesterol levels to penis size to cooking skills. Overall, it looks like strange, captivating stuff, packed with the weird and odd-ball characters that regularly populate Tsangari and Lanthimos’ films. Though, with such films there always remains the question of whether the final product can sustain the inventiveness of the conceit. “The idea of ‘Chevalier’ is so compelling that the movie earns a lot of goodwill that it never completely squanders,” we noted in our review (for which The Playlist was awarded 65 points, according to the trailer).
Check out the trailer above and weigh in with your thoughts on the game and who might be “The Best In General” in the comments below. “Chevalier” opens on May 27th.