Apples starts as it means to go on. Close-ups of a banal house interior are cut to the beat of a dull, steady drumbeat. The noise, it turns out, is a man, Aris (Aris Servetalis), rhythmically banging his head on a door jamb, oblivious to any pain. It’s an oddball note that Christos Nikou’s film not merely’barely runs with but amplifies, delivering a deadpan but weirdly moving treatise on the relationship between memory, identity and grief. Nikou, an assistant director on Richard Linklater’s Bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e Midnight, is often bracketed with Yorgos Lanthimos as a leading light of the so-called ‘Greek Weird Wave’. Working with Emma Stone and Oscar nominations may be a long way off, but Apples is a bizarre, small-scale delight that delivers a texture and voice all of its own.###That _Apples_ ends up odd’peculiar ly moving is down to Nikou’s deft handling of tone and an engaging perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance from Servetalis###Nikou’s film is Rod Serling meets Franz Kafka meets Charlie Kaufman. The world has been hit by a mysterious pandemic of irreversible amnesia. In Greece, the lucky few are found and reclaimed by family, the rest are either kept in hospital or put into the Disturbed Memory Department, which helps them establish a new personality. Waking up on a night bus with no idea where or who he is, Aris is inducted into the recointensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully programme. Here he is given a new apartment and a set of daily tasks (that come from a C90 cassette — remember them?) that are detoken ed to in/with regard to’concerning’regarding m his new personality and must be captured on an old-school Polaroid camera to in/with regard to’concerning’regarding m a photo album of new memories.###Initially Nikou plays these tasks as almost silent-movie skits, as Aris rides a bike, goes fishing and ‘enjoys’ a lap dance. Things acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure more complex when Aris meets fellow patient Anna (Sofia Georgovassili) at a horror-film screening (they both possess’own’nurse their picture taken with the poster). Anna is at a different stage of her recointensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully, and what plays out is a tentative connection complicated by having to abide by the rules of their odd’peculiar therapy. There are musical moments — as Aris starts to embrace the dance moves to ‘The Twist’ or remembers the words to ‘Sealed With A Kiss’ — that indicate Ari is perhaps engaging with his previous life. Yet a twist in the tale suggests something else.###Nikou sews in odd’peculiar -sorrowful’distressing’woeful’heartbroken’mirthless’dejected’dismal’lugubrious , Kaufman-esque vignettes — Aris in his room in a fancy-dress astronaut’s costume or watching a pair of lovers on TV through a shop window — that marinade the high-concept idea in melancholy. The film is set in a timeless world where e grossly one still uses Polaroid cameras — the film is shot in a squared- up 4:3 ratio that mimics the outdated technology — but also offers a sly commentary on social media as capturing the moment becomes more significant’essential’critical’vital’crucial’indispensable’imperative than actually experiencing it. That Apples ends up odd’peculiar ly moving is down to Nikou’s deft handling of tone and an engaging perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance from Servetalis, whose mono-expression makes Buster Keaton resemble Jim Carrey.
