Valse Sentimentale

A loose, sunlit drift through awkward summer longing, tender and sincere, with a homemade charm and a quiet ache underneath.

Directed by

Constantina Voulgari

Genres

Drama, Romance

Starring

Thanos Samaras, Loukia Michalopoulou, Andreas Kontopoulos

Overview

Constantina Voulgaris’s first feature film is a delightful anomaly in contemporary cinema, sort of like a Cat Power song. Raw, earnest, melancholy, awkward in parts, razor sharp in others, it's lyrical, yet with an undercutting touch of offbeat humor. And more than anything it's unapologetically a girl's bedroom song, an utterly sincere home movie. Made with the ever-generous currency of a cast and crew of friends, and the ample downtime that Greek summer-in-the-city affords, when everybody else is sunning and hooking up out in the islands, it's a film about two exiles -- in Athens, in summer, in love. A sentimental dance between a girl and a boy who could be stuck in downtown any-ville, yearning to be with each other but too cool to dare, too chicken to admit it, too clumsy not to step on each other's Doc Martens, and too damn sentimental not to surrender, in the end, to that old-fashioned thing called love.

How it feels

Melancholic, earnest, romantic and light. Slow-burning and needs your attention.

About

Love, identity, isolation, coming-of-age

Content

Mild sexual content and language. No violence or gore.

Note

Written by AI, so it can be wrong. Full breakdown

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Watch the trailer on YouTube (opens in a new tab)