Electra Among the Taurians
by Achilleas Kyriakidis
[Ι] It is almost impossible to talk about the third Π and tragically last Π Frieda Liappa film, without referring to the two previous ones. These three films form a dramatic trilogy bonded together by the persistent blood motif Π that both contaminates and cleanses from hubris.
In a brief, but very important and masterly scene, Martha, the main heroine of the second film (It Was a Quiet Death), leaves her bathroom, enters her bedroom, quickly picks up her things and stands in front of the window curtain. She pulls it back violently, sees her own reflection in the window pane and escapes into the rain. In other words we stand before perhaps the most enchanting example of Τvisual ambiguityΥ, so typical of Liappa. Here, the strength and charm of the signifier do not stifle; on the contrary, they demonstrate the signified in a display of a complete lack of directorial vanity. Liappa does not compel one to interpret the scene, instead, she allows him/ her to read it like this: Martha leaves the cold, sterilised blue environment of rationality (that others possess) surrounding her (in the bathroom) and comes into the warmth and solace of red (in the bedroom). She is reborn through an instant of self-awareness, as if she plucks up the courage from her own idol (reflection in the window pane) and goes out into the freedom of a rainy night. [Ι]
In this film, the sketching of the psyche again follows the norms of a geometric discipline but, here, two more shapes have been added. The first one is the infinite straight line: MarthaΥs quest for herself becomes the purifying getaway starting from a known point to go to an unknown (which could be anywhere). The second shape is the helix: MarthaΥs getaway evolves into a wandering: where the route is random and the wanderer may return to the starting point. However, the plotΥs circular development itself (struggling to resemble to the swinging function of a weak memory) reveals LiappaΥs anxiety to sound the depths of the human soul, to look on the human condition with a clear and tender gaze.
If we could say that nocturnal landscapes are the element par excellence connecting the first to the second film, in The Years of the Big Heat the world is reversed, it turns inside out, like a glove. The end of a hot summer. Electra lives alone on the beach where she was born without knowing anything about her past. One afternoon Pavlos arrives. Everything seems familiar and strange to him. An unknown virus, resulting from the heat, has destroyed his memory. The heat becomes increasingly intense. Love among Electra and Pavlos seems inevitable, equally inevitable are passion Π and murder.
After LiappaΥs study on twilight and night, this film is a exposŽ on natural light; the infinite, shadowless, ruthless natural light. It is a light that burns, blinds and, according to the scenario, confuses people and mechanisms of memory and orientation. Nikos Smaragdis (LiappaΥs associate from the first to the last film) uses this light to undress the characters, to reveal their shocking internal tremors. And he gives us the impression that he does it when he finds them alone and, therefore, more vulnerable. In the scenes where all the characters are gathered together, he sits aside, lurking like a prudent "enemy". Here, the movements of the camera are very few Π as if it has given in the heatΥs indolenceΙ
We again find ourselves before individuals being examined in vitro, but under conditions that do not remind us those of a laboratory. Here, LiappaΥs heroes suffocate again under conditions of absolute geometrical freedom: the horizon is open, the sea is flat (and, thus, navigable) but no one leaves. The element of heat - which wipes out memory and works as a catalyst for the final outburst - reminds us of the similar technique of the never-darkening screen at the open-air cinema. In Roads of Love this screen follows (if not triggers) the division of the two siblings. Regarding amnesiac Pavlos, all evidence show that he is Martha, who sacrificed herself in the second film in order to emerge at the Tauris of oblivion and mythΙ

Extract from the text "Two Women" (Pseudomartyries, Ypsilon editions, Athens 1998).