East of the West: Competition - review - NORWAY (Norviyia) by Yannis Veslemes

Vampires are becoming the marginal festival darling characters of film festivals in art house genre features that often make use of sense of humour. This seems to be the case in Veslemes’ Norway, his feature debut after a string of successful shorts, which had its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The story is set in Athens in 1984, and follows the misadventure of Zano, a pleasure-seeking steampunk vampire who is brought to the Greek capital with the prospect of a good life. Instead, he ends up on a strange journey into the night with femme fatale figure and a Nordic Adonis, both also representing different characters of genre films of old.

It’s hard not to read a representation of the modern day Greek situation within the film’s context. Nevertheless, it can be said without a doubt that Norway works much better as a fun horror romp with entertaining and bizarre twists.

On top of that, more than a critique of modern mentality, one can read a nostalgia and celebration of the party culture of the eighties. This is certainly the case in the decadent trendy style of the dark visuals, going for punk over gothic in their vampire depiction, but also through the character of Zano whose motto is that if he doesn’t hear the beat, he will drop dead. Zano’s character is made all the more impressive by Vangelis Mourikis’ performance, with the actor clearly having fun in the part.

The excitement of the pace also comes from the importance of music in Norway, which was after all inspired by a Greek New Wave song with which it shares the title. Veslemes himself wrote the soundtrack and his background in music, as well as musical origins of the projects, provides an impressive example of stylistic synergy that makes it fun.

Despite this, the success of the film will also depend on how much the viewer is going to take the film seriously and this is also down to a certain confused and sometimes trivial thematic approach. Culminated by a ‘shocking’ and memorable final revelation, this film certainly works best when taken as a tributary B-movie translated and inspired by a socio-political atmosphere of a country of the last thirty years.