Apples

A moody, meditative drama about an epidemic of amnesia. this Greek drama raises nettlesome questions about identity and how we relate to each other.

Amnesia is one of those ailments that seem to happen only in the movies.

Have you ever met someone who suffered from significant amnesia — or even know someone who did? Perhaps you know of a person who is missing small pieces of their memory, such as during an accident or illness. But someone who forgot who they were?

“Apples,” a Greek drama from first-time feature film director Christos Nikou, who also wrote the screenplay with Stavros Raptis, takes this cinematic cliché and uses it for something more than “Memento”-esque plot machinations. It’s a moody contemplation of the very concept of identity, and how it’s more malleable and prone to external events than we’d like to think.

Within the film’s world there is an ongoing epidemic of amnesia. The onset is instant, and irreversible. A man cruising down the street suddenly pulls his car over because he has forgotten how to drive. When other motorists ask him to move to unblock the road, he denies he even owns a car.

Other people turn up in similar circumstances, on subways or street corners. It happens to often that people don’t even get angry, just call the authorities to come take away the latest amnesiac.

Usually they are picked up by relatives after their picture is posted, but a small number go “unclaimed.” (Based on the tape machines and other technology, I’m guessing it’s set about 40 years ago.) Perhaps they don’t have any close family members, or they themselves are part of the forgotten. So a government program has been created to help them reintegrate into life.

Aris Servetalis plays the protagonist, never named, who falls asleep on a bus and wakes up with amnesia. Well-dressed and in his early middle years, the man is polite and compliant with the doctors poking and prodding him. After going unclaimed, he is placed in a modest apartment, given money and regular instructions from the program managers (Anna Kalaitzidou and Argyris Bakirtzis).

Their directives are simple at first: go ride a bike (you never really forget), go dancing in a club, watch a scary movie, etc. He is issued a Polaroid camera to take pictures of himself doing these activities, to be placed in an album as proof he’s keeping up with the program.

Later the “missions” grow stranger. Go to a strip club and rub up against the dancer. Find a stranger in a bar and have sex with them in the restroom. Take an old provided car into the forest and intentionally crash it into a tree. It sounds like Jason Bourne stuff.

Occasionally he will bump into another patient in the program and they share notes or help with taking a picture. Interestingly, nobody ever introduces themselves by name, whether an amnesiac or not.

One of these is a young woman (Sofia Georgovassili), another program participant who takes an interest in the man. In addition to losing their memories, these amnesiacs have trouble forming new ones and behave in a dissociative, almost childlike manner. So their romance, or whatever you want to call it, is rote and businesslike.

They are going through the motions of life without the emotional connections that make it truly living.

The title comes from the man’s obsession with eating apples, first in the hospital and then on his own. He finds a bodega near his apartment and buys them by the bagful. It’s the one anchor he has in this new life adrift on a restless sea. But as we’ll see, tastes can change.

Around the middle of the story, something happens that throws off our perception of this man and his quest for a new identity. I’ll say no more.

“Apples” is a slow, moody movie. It’s shot in a very minimalist style without adornment to underscore the man’s emptiness and loneliness. It’s a film of long pauses and pensive moments.

I found it engaging as a rumination on identity and self. How well do we really know each other — or ourselves? In a world where people can just suddenly shrug off everything that makes them who they are, is that really always a curse? For some, it could even be a blessing.