Dimitris Indares’s wake-up call

Greek film director presents his second full-length feature film, ‘Totally Married’ — a comedy

By Panayiotis Panagopoulos - Kathimerini

Dimitris Indares’s comic film “Totally Married,” currently being screened at mainstream movie theaters, is inspired by daily occurrences. In this, his second feature film (the first was “Like a Prairie Cock in Wyoming”), he describes the tensions that arise in a family when it is faced not just with the stresses of daily life but with the arrival of a beautiful maid and an old rival. Indares’s concern for the film’s success is obvious, even though he expresses it with humor. “Let’s just see if we make it across to the other bank — of success — in one piece,” he quips just before entering a screening of his film to see the audience’s reaction.

Do you watch your films in movie theaters after the premiere?

Yes. If you want to know what you have made, it is absolutely necessary to watch the film with a regular audience, to feel their energy.

How do you explain your rather cryptic title? In Greek the film is called “Wedding Slumber.”

I see it as describing a deadening of the senses in deep sleep and the film, in turn, acts as a wake-up call. Everything in relation to the interaction between people is in transition right now. The traditional roles of male and female have been put through the wringer, while the stress provoked by our specific gender anxieties has evolved to the point where we now have to look at one another in the eye, stripped of the armor of our assigned roles.

Family relations are described as fraught with tension in most films. How are they depicted in yours?

Every single relationship includes a power game. Often, one partner will feel completely exhausted by the other’s behavior or temper. And this is because it is all about power.

What was the basis of the screenplay?

The starting point was my own discomfort as a man in front of my wife, who I see suffering because of the many roles she is called upon — by me as well — to perform. I wrote this story in an effort to understand her.

Another source of inspiration was the foreign woman we employed to help out around the house and with the children. Her arrival was as if a big mirror had been put up in front of us, reflecting all of our habits and giving every single source of friction between us a completely different dimension.