Moon, 66 Questions is an odd film. This is not a criticism or a problem, rather it is one of the fundamental things that makes it both intriguing as well as incisive in what it reveals about family. The feature debut from writer-director Jacqueline Lentzou that draws closely from her own experience when her father was hospitalized, it is a smartly written and deeply felt work that defies easy categorization. On the one hand, it is a drama about Artemis (Sofia Kokkali) who has decided to return to her home in Athens to care for her ailing father Paris (Lazaros Georgakopoulo). On the other hand, it is a more bizarre experience about how the past that is lurking in the background of one family can bleed into the present in unexpected ways. It is this strangeness that the film uses, in its own peculiar way, to uncover the fraught journey towards familial reconnection after you may have long thought that was impossible.

This all begins with Artemis seemingly en route to her home as she almost narrates over old home video footage. She has a conversation with someone on a plane, initially discussing the benefits of the window seat before shifting into more serious topics. We don’t see either person as the film just lets their words meld with the seemingly disconnected visuals of a ski resort. It is a fitting start that establishes how, in her own way, Lentzou is quite literally putting the present in conversation with the past. What she is saying by this is anyone’s guess, though it seems to be that she is offering a type of reflective commentary on the memories we have. We record and capture fun moments, though underpinning it is a greater sense of upheaval that is given voice by Artemis. When she arrives home to a crisis, this only increases in abundantly anomalous ways as the film dips its toe into the absurdist surrealism of the Greek new wave. In doing so, it eschews melodrama to become something more intensely reflective.

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Moon-66-Questions
Image via Luxbox

We learn how Paris has suffered a stroke and is now unable to look after himself, leaving it to the young Artemis to take care of him while the rest of the family squabbles amongst themselves about what to do. They are, to put it quite frankly, a weird bunch. Without calling too much attention to it, we learn how they are often self-centered and just generally strange to observe. Lentzou brings this to life with unexpected framing of scenes, initially shooting them from above and obscuring their faces as they all observe the rehabilitation that a mostly silent Paris will now have to go through. All of this was preceded by a collection of rotten food we get to observe, a stark reminder of what happened when he had no one to check in on him. It is a sad moment though a sharp piece of visual storytelling of many in the film that is intertwined with something peculiar. It is not meant to leave you in stitches from laughing, though it wrong foots you just enough to elicit a chuckle. It is a film that turns the banal, and even painful, into something funny that is still captured with a fastidious eye. Much of it is about Artemis caring for her father, going about her day-to-day tasks that are then intercut with her own personal reflections and familial strife. It doesn’t always provide much to grasp onto and often leaves details about characters to a minimum, though this is very much the point. It is all about this one situation and how it threatens to swallow up all of who Artemis is.

The film is about Artemis and her sense of disconnection, making all the ways the film holds others at a distance make sense. In one scene at a pool, she is left sitting outside it and just listening. When she does take part in play with a very intense game of drunken ping-pong, it feels aggressive and almost angry. It is as if she is taking out all the pain of her past on the tiny plastic ball, growing increasingly intense until it culminates in a subsequent accident. This all can feel haphazard, even scattershot on first inspection. Indeed, there are moments that may almost be alienating in how they pull the rug out from otherwise normal situations. However, family is not always easily digestible or classifiable. No matter how much we put forth an image of normalcy to those around us, the more you pull back the layers of who they really are the more you discover about their truer selves. Multiple scenes where the family interviews caretakers for Paris capture this rather adeptly, showing how they are all putting on a performance for a stranger even as small details still slip through. It is in moments like these that the film is quite fascinating to behold, even as it remains elusive and hard to pin down. At the center of it, Kokkali gives an understated yet quietly riveting performance that grounds the story. Even with all of its eccentricities, her gravity creates an emotional core that smooths over any rough spots it encounters. One scene where Artemis recreates a moment from her past and plays essentially two parts before bursting into tears is mesmerizing even as it is melancholy. It shows she is just figuring out things with the rest of us as an audience, uncertain and frustrated yet determined even as she is left to her own devices.

She ends up seeming most free when alone, be it in moments of dance, dragging herself along the ground, or seeming to almost have conversations with the moon which makes the film's title a bit clearer though I’ll leave unspoiled. It is a story that is all about dialing up the disconnection that Artemis feels with her family in a manner that authentically captures just how odd family can be when looking in. They are, after all, basically strangers to each other. Even her own father is someone she doesn't know much about, something she digs into over the course of the film and ends up stumbling upon unexpected revelations about who he was along the way. It is the unusual and unexpected quirks that become a uniquely perfect way to express a disconnection from the past with the painful loneliness that can haunt us into the present. Even as this may be jarring, family itself is messy and not always easily defined by our expectations for how things are supposed to go. The film is not seeking to be anything other than a portrait of a seemingly ordinary family which it ends up achieving in spades by embracing how completely unordinary they can be. One final scene that plays out almost as a last supper, extended for agonizing minutes that feel more like hours, makes this clear as it finds a tentative catharsis that leaves a lingering and profound impact all its own.