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| Costa-Gavras: Adults in the Room (2019). Christos Loulis as Yanis Varoufakis. |
Ενήλικοι στην αίθουσα
FR/GR © 2019 KG Productions / Wild Bunch / Elle Driver / France 2 Cinéma / Odeon SA. P: Alexandre Gavras, Michèle Ray-Gavras.
D: Costa-Gavras. SC: Yanis Varoufakis, Costa-Gavras – based on the book Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment (2017) by Yanis Varoufakis. DP: Giorgos Arvanitis - negative: 35 mm – 2,35:1 – colour – Dolby Digital – release: DCP. Cost: Agis Panagiotou. M: Alexandre Desplat. ED: Costa-Gavras, Lambis Haralambidis.
C: Christos Loulis (Yannis), Alexandros Bourdoumis (Alexis), Ulrich Tukur (Wolfgang), Daan Schuurmans (Jeroen), Christos Stergioglou (Sakis), Dimitris Tarloou (Efklis), Josiane Pinson (Christine), Cornelius Obonya (Wims), Vincent Nemeth (Michel), Aurélien Recoing (Pierre), Alexandros Logothetis (Manos), Thanos Tokakis (Yorgos), Themis Panou (Siagas), George Lenz (Troika Leader), Maria Protopappa (Elena), Francesco Acquaroli (Maria), Valeria Golino (Dea). Dan Fredenburgh (Osborne), Trevor Sellers (Juncker). Adam Arnold (Finnish Minister).
Loc: Paris, Athens, Riga, Brussels, Strasbourg, Frankfurt am Main, London, Berlin.
In English, Greek, French and German.
124 min
Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2019 Venice Film Festival.
Greek premiere: 29 Sep 2019.
French premiere: 6 Nov 2019.
Corona lockdown viewings / Virtual Midnight Sun Film Festival: Online Press Screening.
Elle Driver screener link, adaptation in English: Andrew Litvack, subtitling: Hiventy.
Viewed at home in Helsinki on a 4K tv set, 28 May 2020
IMDb synopsis: "Greece in 2015: the economy is in tatters and the country is on the verge of bankruptcy. A new government rebels against the EU's iron-fisted rule and inspires millions of Europeans. Based on the political memoirs of Yanis Varoufakis."
Wikipedia synopsis: "In 2015, following the Syriza's victory to the 2015 Greek legislative election, Greek minister of finance Yánis Varoufákis was tasked by Prime Minister Aléxis Tsípras to negociate a new deal on the Greek bailouts signed by previous government with the Troïka, in order to avoid the country having to face another debt crisis. However, following succesive meetings of the Eurogroup throughout the entire film, Varoufakis proposals are only met with flat refusals from Troïka's institutions. With constant threats from the European institution of an eviction of Greece from the Eurozone if their demands aren't met, Greek PM Aléxis Tsípras is forced to sign the MoU, going against popular will which rejected the bailouts through referundum with the No winning with 62% of the ballots. Yánis Varoufákis then resign five months after taking office."
Synopsis: "Behind closed doors, a human tragedy plays out. A universal theme: a story of people trapped in an inhuman network of power. The brutal circle of the Eurogroup meetings, who impose on Greece the dictatorship of austerity, where humanity and compassion are utterly disregarded. A claustrophobic trap with no way out, exerting pressures on the protagonists which finally divide them. A tragedy in the Ancient Greek sense: the characters are not good or evil, but driven by the consequences of their own conception of what it is right to do. A tragedy for our very modern time."
Costa-Gavras: Director’s Statement: "You never forget the country of your birth, especially when it is a country like Greece. I fled my country because, back then, all it offered to young people of my social class was a life of submission to a theocratic-democracy. As an immigrant, France allowed me to surpass my wildest dreams. My ‘Greekness’ took hold of me again when the Colonels seized power. The expression of my personal resistance was Z. Ten years ago, the Greek crisis plunged the country back into the same situation that made me flee in the first place. And this, of course, made me want to express my revolt once again, with Adults in the Room."
AA: The Greek debt crisis is a harrowing topic, an extremely painful chapter in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. It is still going on. From the viewpoint of the cinema, it could be handled as a horror film, a catastrophe film or a straight documentary. The innocents – the Greek people – have suffered excessively. No wonder that populists have thrived.
The challenge for the film-maker is in the nature of the subject. There is no visible enemy, no tangible monster. Ultimately what happened, and what is still happening, was a consequence of the development of the global financial system, the evolution of new and complex financial instruments during the digital age, when speculations can take place within fractions of seconds, and when ingenious tax shelter arrangements make possible an extreme escalation of inequality. The have-nots end up having less than nothing: an endlessly worsening spiral of debt. This is the horror story of Greece after 2008.
In Shakespeare's time politics could be dramatized as tragedy. Even Oliver Stone succeeded in Nixon in adapting classical tragedy to politics. Usually, however, even Shakespeare expressed politics not via tragedy, but within the epic genre of the historical play.
Costa-Gavras is a master of the political thriller, author of the classic trilogy Z (1969, based on the assassination of Lambrakis in Greece), The Confession (1970, about the Stalinist Slansky show trial in Prague) and State of Siege (1972, about US involvement in the repression of the Tupamaros in Uruguay), all starring Yves Montand, with strong scripts by Jorge Semprún or Franco Solinas and memorable scores by Mikis Theodorakis or Giovanni Fusco.
Who would be a better candidate to direct a film about the Greek disaster than Costa-Gavras? "Greek tragedy" is a popular saying about what is happening, but as Jessica Kiang, the critic of Variety, has stated, nobody is expecting here revelations of Varoufakis having killed his father and married his mother.
Classic tragedy is out of the question, but Costa-Gavras is not resorting to his pet genre of the political thriller, either. Instead, the approach is that of the historical play. The film is based on the memoirs of Yanis Varoufakis, the economist who was the Minister of Finance of Greece for the first half of 2015. Predictably, the film is partisan. Although it has been made on a solid budget, it proceeds mostly as a series of meetings. From potentially boring premises the film gets electrified by the mise-en-scène of the director and the dynamic contribution of the DP Giorgos Arvanitis, the master cinematographer of Angelopoulos.
The historical play was one of the genres favoured by Bertolt Brecht in his "epic theatre". Adults in the Room is not a Brechtian film, but there are a couple of distancing effects reminding us that this is a musical or a show. These are digressions in the film which remains on the whole sober and factual. There is a tendency to caricature in the portraits of the double-faced Frenchman Michel [Sapin] and particularly Wolfgang [Schäuble] whose presence has been compared with Dr. Strangelove.
The title of the movie stems from a comment by Christine [Lagarde]: "We need adults in this room". While not an "all male panel", the movie is dominated by men, and the task of the leading female character, Varoufakis's wife Dea (Valeria Golino), is mostly to serve tzatziki to negotiators on a mission to save Greece. On the other hand, Christine Lagarde emerges as a memorably constructive figure. And behind it all is of course the formidable and unseen Angela Merkel. Viewing this in the pandemic spring of 2020 everybody knows that women have succeeded particularly well in handling the unheard-of catastrophe. Would we also need more women in the room to save Greece?
There is a Finnish detail in the movie. Meetings of the Eurogroup are central, and the Finnish finance minister appears as one of the hardliners. This is correct. The unnamed minister also cuts a slightly ridiculous figure. Our finance minister during Varoufakis's tenure was Antti Rinne, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party, later the prime minister before Sanna Marin, now the first deputy speaker of the Parliament.
Finnish Social Democrats have generally been sympathetic towards Greeks, paid by a severe decline in their support in elections. Voters have found it hard to accept Greece's blatant forgery of financial statistics, massive kleptocracy by a corrupt elite and enormous investments and deposits of national funds flowing to foreign assets and offshore accounts. The populist True Finns party has been on the rise, and the Greek quandary has been one of their trump cards.
Finland's part is tiny in this epic, but what happened here reflects all Europe. If the European project is not based on honesty and fair play, the EU and the Euro are in danger. Costa-Gavras is not blind to this, but his and Varoufakis's account is not very balanced.
Strengths of the film include besides Giorgos Arvanitis's engaging cinematography also a strong performance by Christos Loulis in the leading role as Yanis Varoufakis. On the whole, Adults in the Room is a valuable contibution to a theme of urgent importance, but it is not very good cinema. Granted, Costa-Gavras was 86 years old when he made this film. But senior masters have been making some of their best films at a late stage. Andrzej Wajda released Afterimage at 90, and Agnès Varda was also 90 when she brought Varda par Agnès to the Berlin Film Festival.
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THE KEY TO THE CAST OF CHARACTERS (FROM FRENCH WIKIPEDIA):
Chrístos Loúlis (VF : Félicien Juttner) : Yánis Varoufákis, ministre des finances grec
Aléxandros Bourdoúmis (VF : Éric Caravaca) : Aléxis Tsípras, Premier ministre grec
Ulrich Tukur (VF : François Marthouret) : Wolfgang Schäuble, Ministre des Finances allemand
Daan Schuurmans (VF : Arnaud Bedouët) : Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Président de l'Eurogroupe
Dimítris Tárloou : Euclide Tsakalotos, ministre des finances grec
Josiane Pinson (VF : elle-même) : Christine Lagarde, présidente du FMI
Valeria Golino (VF : Olga Grumberg) : Danái Strátou, épouse de Varoufákis
Aurélien Recoing : Pierre Moscovici, Commissaire européen aux affaires économiques et monétaires
Vincent Nemeth (VF : lui-même) : Michel Sapin, Ministre français de l'Économie et des Finances
Francesco Acquaroli : Mario Draghi, président de la Banque centrale européenne
George Lenz : le chef de la troïka
Philip Schurer : George Osborne, ministre des Finances anglais
Damien Mougin : Emmanuel Macron, ministre français de l'Économie, de l'Industrie et du Numérique
Aléxandros Logothétis : Mános
Chrístos Stérgioglou : Sákis
Cornelius Obonya : Wims
Thános Tokákis : Yórgos
María Protópappa : Elena
Thémis Pánou : Siágas
Kostas Antalopoulos (l'attaché de presse de Wolfgang Schäuble)
Skyrah Archer : une secrétaire de l'Eurogroupe
Marina Argyropolo : Fenia
Georges Corraface : l'ambassadeur de Grèce en France
Giannis Dalianis
Adrian Frieling : le ministre des Finances lituanien
