'Sea of Glass' Review: Greek Tragedy of Widows and Allies
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- "Sea of Glass" is writer-director Alexis Alexiou's third feature, following his Tribeca-premiering thriller "Wednesday 04:45" (2014), and recently bowed out of competition at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
- Veteran actress Evangelia Andreadaki (of last year's Greek Oscar submission "Arcadia") stars as Vangelio, a mid-sixties widow who retreats to an off-season coastal hotel on Evia after her husband dies, carrying much of her backstory in what the review calls "weary silence."
- Christiana Matelska Toka plays 23-year-old Vicky, who runs the rundown seaside hotel single-handedly under her abusive alcoholic father (Michalis Iatropoulos) and forms a tacit cross-generational bond with Vangelio.
- The 130-minute film, co-written by Alexiou with Afroditi Nikolaidou, draws on classical Greek tragedy and "Thelma and Louise" as inspirations, with the review noting a "slow-burning setup" that delays a violent, pace-shifting final act.
- DP Simos Sarketzis shoots in "softly frosted blues, greens and browns," with the biblical title drawn from the Book of Revelation's "sea of glass" passage to heaven — fittingly matching a film defined by water imagery and stormy weather.
Why it matters: Alexiou's first feature in 11 years anchors Greek cinema's internationally recognized wave on Andreadaki's weathered lead performance, though the 130-minute runtime tests patience before delivering a feminist finale the review calls "exhilaratingly" pace-shifting.
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