Argyris, Sofia and Marina are three loafers in their 30s who live together in a mansion. They lost any point in living and instead spend their time with stealing in restaurants and stores or grifting from people. They steal a car and use it to pick up their friend Andreas who is released from prison, and who joins them to live in the house. Sofia is the only one who earns something as a prostitute. Andreas earns some money by starring in a porn film, and brings the porn actress Rosa to live with them. Rosa persuades them to rob a safe in a warehouse while she dances topless for the old manager upstairs, but later Andreas and Argyris claim they didn't find any money, so the swindled Rosa leaves them. Their mansion is being broken into and searched by unknown men led by a blond man who sits outside and observes them. When they find Rosa wounded in the mansion, they bring her to the hospital and kill the blond man whom they blame for it. The unknown men start a siege of the mansion, shooting and killing Marina and Sofia. Andreas takes a shotgun and aims it at the dead Argyris, while also places another shutgun into Argyris' hand, and then pulls both triggers.
Included in two polls by the Greek Film Critics Association as one of the 10 best Greek films in history, Nikos Nikolaidis' "Sweet Bunch" (an ironic paraphrasing of Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch") is one of the most unusual, uncapturable and refreshing cult movies of that cinema: daft, cool, energetic, modern, stylish, filled with pop-culture references, which hit the nerve of the time by describing a young generation that lost any hope in their future. The movie already starts off deliciously odd with Marina sleeping in her bed, surrounded by little dolls, while Strauss' musical poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra" plays in the background while Sofia is dressing up before she goes to her work as a prostitute—but then Sofia puts headphones on Marina's head, and the music switches to The Chordettes' song "Mr Sandman". The story is a blend of “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Grifters”, only done as a comedy: the four protagonists are people in their 30s, but they are still stuck acting as teenagers defying the world just out of spite. Some of their swindling is simply clever, almost charming: for instance, Marina puts on an inflated balloon under her giant dress to pretend she is pregnant, goes into a store, and returns back home with dozens of stolens items under her dress.
In another, Argyris goes to a restaurant and orders a coke, while at the other end, on a different table, Sofia orders a giant meal for three people, and puts some food in her purse. In the toilet, Argyris and Sofia exchange their bills. Sofia goes to the cash desk first and pays a small amount for the coke. Later, Argyris goes to the cash desk and protests that they charged him a fortune for a coke, blaming the waiter for mixing up the bills. Argyris only pays for the coke and leaves the restaurant, and the waiter has no proof to stop him for the "free meal". In a couple of moments, Nikolaidis strays too much into an occasional weird, bizarre or inexplicable scene, and the running time could have been shortened, but he compensates this through a wide range of playful ideas (Andreas bring a porn actress with him in the mansion), symbols (their home is decorated with American movie posters, from “Star Trek” to “The Jazz Singer”, an allegory how Western values are cool, but often feel spiritually empty) and dialogues (Argyris’ great monologue towards Marina, when he says there are three hungry points in a person; a brain, so one feeds it with truth; the stomach, so one feeds it with food; and sex, so one feeds it with love: "In my lifetime, I satisfied all three"). It’s not clear who the people surveilling them are: are they a rival gang? The secret police of the government? A group hired by someone they robbed as revenge? But either way, they become the major catalyst of the story: the four youngsters live their lives in such utter boredom and careless attitude that they are not even nihilists—they are apatheists, people who neither have something to live for nor die for, for whom even talking about the meaning become meaningless. They lost all purpose in life. But as the siege of their house starts, they are awakened from this apathy and finally find something worth living and dying for: their friendship. As short as it was, in the end they find their meaning.
Grade:+++
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