THE STORY – Jo, melancholic, wild and only fifteen, dreams of her last breath. Tiny nuances, signs and symbols of the dream plane will quietly pop up during the day, yet she recognises nothing. All she knows is that she missed the school bus, and her mom does not offer a helping hand. School feels boring and uneventful: a boyfriend that hasn’t learnt how to kiss yet, a class of no interest, random gossip. Thankfully, in singing lesson, out of the blue, everything shifts: Phaedra’s angelic voice mesmerises the whole class and makes Jo cry.
THE CAST – Evita Andriopoulou, Eleni Vergeti & Anastasia Gouliamou
THE TEAM – Jacqueline Lentzou (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 88 Minutes
Many films have dealt with the question of mortality, of life after death and of the spirit world, Powell and Pressburger’s “A Matter of Life and Death” and Kore-eda’s “Afterlife” being two famous examples. In “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra,” Jacqueline Lentzou draws inspiration from a real-life event in Athens, when a 15-year-old boy was murdered by a policeman in the street not far from where the director was living. Rather than reevoking this tragic event, Lentzou ponders what it means to be dead, yet also present in the world, and what it means to be alive. She tackles these questions with a lightness of touch and a sense of humor, not to mention some real craftsmanship and vision.
The film begins with a girl lying on a sunlit lawn, while unseen voices are having a conversation with an invocation to send the girl a dream. Strange, apparently unconnected symbols are being shown to the sleeping girl, before one of the voices says: “Wake her up.” Thus begins our day following the life of Jo (Evita Andriopoulou), a 15-year-old high school girl in Athens. She’s late for school, misses the bus and tries to sweet-talk her mum (Eleni Vergeti) into giving her lift. When her mum refuses, Jo unleashes her anger and the family car is the one to suffer. Yet when Jo is finally being driven to school, she’s all adorableness personified while talking to her mum’s friend who’s riding shotgun. At school she snogs her boyfriend, gossips with her mates: so far, so much your typical teenager. Yet when she encounters Phaedra (Anastasia Gouliamou) in music class – loads of the kids have brilliant mythological names; we are in Athens, but it’s like a school attended by teenage 21st-century gods – the girl’s angelic voice has a profound effect on Jo and she thus embarks on what she hopes will become a friendship with the dulcet-voiced companion.
This is only her second feature, but Lentzou is unafraid to take risks, playing with images and sounds. As the camera floats above Jo’s neighborhood, we hear from close up the girl’s preparations for the day, her muffled breathing, her movements, a door slamming. This intimacy of the sound is like being plunged deep into her mind. As when we are underwater and only hear the sounds of our breath or heartbeat, so is the sound of Jo in our heads in the film. Colors change and images blur to become something new: water, a starry sky, or simply blackness, which Lentzou is happy to linger over, creating a sense of disorientation and expectation in the viewer.
Music is central to the film. Jo’s terrifying mum listens to Roxy Music’s “Flesh and Blood,” singing along with gusto before teaching her tap dance class (if you think she’s hard on Jo, wait until you see what she’s like with her pupils). When Jo has an epiphanous moment on hearing Phaedra singing, she realizes she loves the old traditional songs. Her attempts at singing are sweet, revealing this teenager’s true self – a sensitive and possibly lonely young woman who’s not too sure of herself or some of her choices. Andriopoulou is in virtually every scene and she carries the film with aplomb.
It’s no easy thing to tackle such a huge and potentially divisive subject, yet Lentzou is brave enough to do so. Her film flits through time and space, offering a take on what the spirit world might look like (not too bad, apparently). It reminds us of the fragility and preciousness of life and makes the audience consider some big questions about life, death, and everything that may or may not lie between. She captures the teenage experience well and always with compassion and warmth. Jo is a lovely heroine: it’s a shame that we don’t get the chance to spend more than a day in her company, but it will certainly be interesting to spend more time with Lentzou in the future.
