Beautiful blackmail

Blackmail Boy * Written and directed by Michalis Reppas and Thanassis Papathanasiou * Picture This!

Christes (Yannis Tsimitselis) is a 20-year-old stud who puts his olive skin, thick black hair, bedroom eyes, pillow-cushion lips, and oft-displayed Olympian physique to profitable use in a provincial Greek town. He may be sleeping with an older, drugged-out woman, but his more lucrative fling is with Yorgos, a middle-aged family man. No one comes off clean in this slick, high-energy soap opera of a flick. (Its original title is Oxygen, as in small-town lack thereof.) Fearing blackmail, Yorgos tries to break up with Christos. "People are talking," he explains. "This isn't Athens." But lust rules: He can't resist him, especially when he's down to his briefs. Christes is more in the vein of negative pre-lib stereotypes than the gay goody-two-shoes types we frequently see in today's movies. Perhaps we've come full circle and don't mind embracing our nastier impulses on the big screen. Actually, Blackmail Boy's message is that you can't trust any male, whether or not he takes his sexual cues from the ancient Greeks.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group