What's a Greek phrase that means "jumbled mess?" Whatever it is, that's what we have here. This incredibly "swinging" mishmash of nothingness is from that romanticized country where ancient relics still stand. Yes, Greece now has a brand new relic, "Black Milk," a film that should be an embarrassment to that country for a long time. It comes across as a really, really bad Spanish soaper with some of the most ludicrous mysticism and hoakum to be found in a film in a long time.

The film concerns a young TV writer who has just been dumped by the lead actress of the show for which he is chief scribe. See, he made her a star and then she dumps him. He obsesses over her and in the process comes to be able to literally, LITERALLY, vanish in his grief. The TV show they work on together, by the way, is one of the craziest things you have ever seen, sort of a "Little Shop of Horrors" if the set decorator were Almodovar's retarded brother. Anyway, after much kvetching about all this nothingness. The writer goes through numerous ordeals that are painstakingly dull and stupid. His agent, who looks like Aristotle Onansis back from the dead (and has about as much personality as a corpse), leads him through all kinds of goofy tribulation: He gets him hookers, gets him a seemingly gay roommate who also makes him write and write as well do drugs and have sex in gay bar back rooms, buys him a massive house, throws parties where American rock singers perform. And on and on.

Oh God! One of the most crazy and astounding things of the film is the appearance of some sort of mystical psychic, who is supposed to be from Las Vegas, who tries to help the protag with his problem of disappearing. He looks like Rob Zombie's inbred cousin. The psychic speaks English, of course, although with a heavy accent, and quotes 50's rock tunes. It's nuts. It's particularly insane if you are an American. This representation of our country is nothing short of ham-handed implausibility. I don't even know what they were going for here, let alone what they might be trying to say about American culture. On the same theme, later in the film, a party occurs where an American rock singer performs. The music, and the look of the party, seems to be a sort of modern extension of 60's spy flick culture. Has this phenomenon, one that is not occurring in America, become a trend in Greece? Do they have parties where everyone seems to be the folks who worship these old hip James Bond-esque flicks? It's either an interesting insight into modern Greek pop culture, or just more crazy nonsense of the filmmaker's mechanisms.

The plot of this mess is so convoluted and, more importantly, so incomprehensible and stupid, that the mere telling of it makes it seem far more interesting than it really is. It is mind-bogglingly bad. It is bad in new and inventive ways.

The film goes all over the map and seems to be directed by a hack who will allow anything if he thinks it will be interesting. A scene where a tertiary character destroys the film set with an ax is particularly bad. This guy, Nicholas Triandafyllidis (perhaps that's the Greek word for mishmash) should never be allowed near a camera again.

Nor should he be allowed near a post-production facility. One of the most annoying aspects of the film is the Greek pop music that blares throughout every scene. It's annoying as all fuck. And when it isn't going on during the body of the film, then there's some old tart singing the most annoying opera tunes. Audibly, this film would be a complete waste of optical sound if it weren't for the appearance, in it's later stages, of the groovy American singer and his band. Unfortunately, I was so annoyed by the film that I didn't stay to the credits to try and figure out who it was.

That "Black Milk" is a competition film in the Austin Film Festival, a fest geared towards screenwriting, is particularly ironically stupid. This film was obviously written by someone with some serious problems. Both mental and professional.

Note:

Script by director Triandafyllidis and Christos Homenidis.

In Greek with subtitles and sparse English. One scene, which had Greek subtitles (where you could not hear the actor's speaks - an homage to that scene in Lynch's "Fire Walk with Me" perhaps?) had Greek subtitles. The English subtitles were superimposed over these making them near impossible to read. Who subtitled this film? They were as much hacks as the rest of the gang here.

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