SUNTAN

It’s been 30 years since the 1987 American thriller Fatal Attraction scared the hell out of philandering males everywhere with the morality tale of the weekend affair that lawyer Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) has with editor Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) and how it escalates into a full-blooded nightmare for him after he spurns her and she refuses to give him up, becoming his demented nemesis. “Hell hath no fury…” the saying goes and Alex proves how unpleasant the woman scorned can be when one of her party-pieces is to kill (hopefully) and put Dan’s daughter’s pet rabbit into a simmering pot on the stove at his house, the source of the popular expression “bunny-boiler”.

In the dark and unflinching Greek film Suntan, released last month, Anna is the lovely but flirty 21 year old hedonist who arrives with a small group of like-minded friends on the small Greek Cycladic island of Antiparos for some hard partying and nudity on the island’s remote beaches. A minor accident on a scooter gets her into the surgery of the new island doctor, a middle-aged man called Kostis who has spent a dreary winter there being told how the place changes in the summer, specifically being over run by young females “gagging for it” according to local Lotharios. Kostis dresses Anna’s leg wound and later falls for her when she shows him a little affection and a lot else. No bunny-boiler Anna nevertheless has the morals of a rabbit, and a confusing penchant for Sapphic experiences, and she tires of Kostis when he cant satisfy her. She then cruelly dumps him, for it all to end predictably in tears as Kostis drinks to forget and is fired when he can’t be found to treat an injured child.

Suntan stars Makis Papadimitriou as the sad Kostis we all feel sorry for and Elli Tringou as the flighty Anna we don’t. Both leads are strong and make Suntan, directed by Argyris Papadimitropoulos, the warning that every middle-aged man, missing his lost youth should see.

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