Chevalier handles the world of competitive Western masculinity with a gentle touch. It sets strict limits on this potentially vast subject, building a narrative that is allegorical, if somewhat barebones, and finishing it all with an absurdist sheen.
The setup is straightforward: six men play a game on a yacht. They have been brought together by a patriarchal figure, known only by his profession as “The Doctor” (Yiorgos Kendros), to enjoy a diving holiday on the Aegean Sea. With a bit of time to kill before they arrive back in Athens, they invent a game, which they artlessly dub “The Best at Everything.” The rules require that the men—all of them around middle age—scrutinize each other’s every move, and then judge each other on a point system. They scribble away in little notebooks, evaluating everything from how fast they can assemble a bookcase to their estimated virility. The prize: a pinky ring, the “chevalier.”
The film looks and sounds beautiful. There is something enticingly primal about the opening scene—shots of the men emerging from the ocean onto a sepia beach, gulls calling, waves roaring. In slick wetsuits, they seem like sea creatures evolved to walk on land, an impression that gives way to life on the yacht in a sort of fast-forward evolution to “Western civilization” and all of its more trivial taxonomy. The uncluttered landscape is frequently revisited, action broken up by lingering images of water, rock and sky.
The yacht is a quirkier setting. Still serene in whites and creams, here manic electronica sometimes rises above the crashing waves, and the social competition rages. The antics resulting from “The Best at Everything” are portrayed with a sense of humor that is lightly absurdist, sometimes slapstick and, though often quiet, never particularly subtle. The men walk the fine line of caricature, steered to safety on the one hand by strong acting, on the other by a prevailing sympathy from writer/director Athina Rachel Tsangari and her co-writer, Efthymis Filippou.
The most compelling character by a mile is Dimitris (Makis Papadimitriou), a sort of “holy fool” whose far pettier brother, Yannis (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos), acquiesced to bring him on the trip. Dimitris doesn’t have a judgmental bone in his body, though—earnest and simpleminded, he is eager to prove himself equal to his peers. The way the men interact with Dimitris is one of the clearer litmus tests for whether the film succeeds as comedy or deteriorates into tragedy or heartless farce. Dimitris’ lip sync performance of the ‘70s hit “Lovin’ You” is met with handshakes and accolades, and it even evokes generosity from his brother, who dances ludicrously behind him, waving sparklers. This is Chevalier skirting lines at its riskiest and most successful.
It is also the closest the film gets to fireworks. While each man has a “breaking point,” the plot builds to a plateau, with the final competition—a blood oath—not any more obviously dramatic or absurd than the earlier phallo-comparative competition that drove one beat-down passenger, Nikolaou (Vangelis Mourikis), to knock on bedroom doors, demanding that someone come out and admire his “beautiful erection.”
By the end of the film, disaster is avoided, but consequently lessons are not learned. Chevalier settles for self-conscious optimism: having parodied society’s superficial markers of masculinity, the film rests easy and affirms an underlying brotherhood.
The post Chevalier appeared first on Spectrum Culture.
