Greek cinema is having a moment, despite the troubles the European country has been going through in the last couple of decades. Directors like Yorgos Lanthimos have become famous worldwide for their movies, especially Lanthimos’ English language films like The Lobster, The Favourite, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, along with his upcoming science-fiction movie, Poor Things.
Lanthimos’ work has come to define the Greek New Wave (affectionately dubbed the Greek Weird Wave), which has come to show the general disillusionment with Greek society, economics, and government amid the crisis. Although many Greek New Wave movies rarely gain mainstream attention from media in the West and outside of Greece, these films are increasingly worth keeping an eye on, especially with the release of Broadway.
Broadway is the directorial debut of director Christos Massalas, who has gained massive support in the efforts of making this movie. Previously, Massalas gained attention for his shorts and was even selected as one of the fifteen emerging directors globally at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival. His work previously appeared in the shorts competition for Cannes Film Festival, showing his immense talent before making a feature-length. Broadway tells the story of pickpockets living in Athens and finding solace in each other when times are hard. Elsa Lekakou, Foivos Papadopoulos, Stathis Apostolou, Rafael Papad, and Salim Talbi all star in the movie.
According to Variety, Broadway specifically gained the support of the Greek Film Center and the Sundance Institute, and Massalas was even selected for screenwriting labs at Cannes and Sundance to help create and flesh out the movie. Broadway dubs itself a film noir musical with elements of social realism, which increasingly becomes evident as it incorporates dance and song into the storyline. It appeared at several film festivals around the world before landing a theatrical release in major United States cities, like New York and Los Angeles. Le Pacte picked up the movie for worldwide distribution.
Found Families and a Life of Petty Crime
Neda Film
Broadway opens in a classic manner: two characters, a man and a woman, sit across from each other. The man is in jail, and in a voiceover to conclude the scene, the movie pivots immediately to the past, back to what caused them to be there in that moment. As Nelly, the woman, puts it, she keeps finding herself in terrible situations. Nelly was working at a nightclub as a pole dancer, trying to make a living for herself. Her mother married a rich man who wasn’t her father, who Nelly refers to as the pitbull, and Nelly now sees her mother as a monster. It’s one night at work when she meets Markos, the man she would later be sitting across from while he is in prison.
That night, Nelly’s mother sends a group of men she hired to collect Nelly and bring her home. In the audience, she sees Markos and recognizes him as a regular who gives her good tips, but tonight he is going to save her from her past. They soon become lovers, and he tells her to come to Broadway with him, which is where his family resides.
Despite Nelly believing Broadway was in the United States, this Greek version of Broadway exists inside a theater complex that’s been abandoned. Everyone who lives there comes from a unique background: artists, crooks, people on the run. For someone like Nelly, this will become a new home, as she, too, does not have anywhere else where she belongs.
A Film Noir and LGBTQ+ Mash-Up on Broadway
Neda Films
For a while, it seems like she has found the right place for her to survive inside. The family works as a team, using Nelly as a public spectacle so that the others can pickpocket out the bystanders who have stopped to watch her dance on the street. However, things start to change when a new addition to the family joins Nelly during her dancing routines on the street, reinventing their identity as a woman for the street performances, renamed Barbara from Jonas, to get away from the people who left them bloody and beaten to a pulp.
With the two out on the streets and working together with their dancing, their chemistry, and energy begin to draw larger crowds each day. It’s only a matter of time before Markos is caught taking wallets out of people’s pockets by the police, and with him out of the equation, the lust between Nelly and Jonas begins to dominate their relationship with each other.
Broadway dangles elements of film noir into it, taking the streets of Athens and fusing the more traditional characteristics of the genre, incorporating elements of drag and the local LGBTQ+ community to add more relevant twists for the modern audience. As the viewer learns from the beginning with Nelly, the past is never truly left behind, even when one thinks that person or object is gone forever. Some of the shining scenes throughout the movie come when the characters, who have lived for so long in the shadows and are caged, can break free of the constraints placed upon them, which extends deeper on a physical metaphor with the monkey, Lola, being taken out of the cage frequently when Markos is arrested.
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Broadway Is a Visually Splendid Yet Bumpy Ride
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Cinematography is one of the highlights of Broadway, especially as the score adds to the ambiance of the movie at just the right moments. Each frame feels deliberate and delightfully cinematic, whether it’s the characters standing in an abandoned screening room now turned into a bedroom, or Nelly letting the family’s pet monkey out to dance with while everyone’s asleep at night.
The camera rarely shifts from Nelly’s perspective except when needed, such as when Markos is arrested or Jonas, as Barbara, goes once a week to a building for a mysterious task. Voiceovers from Nelly’s perspective add more context, implying that a lot of the events happening on the screen are coming from a sense of recollection.
However, the film’s plot seems to conveniently leave out critical things that seem relevant early on. Even though Jonas ultimately transitions into the persona of Barbara, there are elements of her past that are consistently teased throughout the movie and even used as a threat at some points.
But by the end of Broadway, none of these looming shadows over her past come to the surface and only remain talking points, effectively making these details become red herrings that lead to nowhere. Towards the end of the film, these disjointed details can be frustrating, especially as they are brought up repeatedly and never actually used. Even for Nelly, the topic of her mother trying to find her is even forgotten, although her mother sent people to find her at the beginning of Broadway.
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The Seductive Qualities of a Very Greek Broadway
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Other elements complement the themes and tone of the movie. Taking place in Athens, the film gets to the deep, dirty side of the city beyond what people might imagine about Greece. The emphasis on LGBTQ+ relationships and fluid identity adds to the characters and the situations they’re facing, even if being rescued by a group of drag queens from the police might not be amusing for the police officers about to be trampled.
There is quite a bit to unpack throughout the movie when it comes to gender discourse and analysis. Two of the men living at Broadway are in a relationship with each other, while Nelly, lured in by the charm of being rescued by someone, increasingly engages in a same-sex relationship after Jonas transitions into Barbara.
Broadway is a seductive movie, luring in the viewers for one last tantalizing look before getting the final say in what happens next. At its essence, one could interpret it as a found family story, one in which a group of criminals, artists, and dancers come together to find something in a world that rejected them. In Greece, which has been hit hard by economic crises in the past couple of years, many are forced to make hard decisions for the sake of surviving and getting through the week.
However, that does not make them bad people — as seen throughout the film, these characters just want the chance to feel like they are free and at peace. One thing is for certain: Christos Massalas is a director that should be watched in the future. Broadway itself shows quite a bit of promise for the debut of a director just getting started in the industry.
Broadway is out in theaters on April 27, 2023, and will be available digitally and on DVD on May 16.
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