After Hours (1985)

When: Wednesday, July 8th at 21.00
Where: Cinema "Lais", Greek Film Archive, Iera Odos 48 & Megalou Alexandrou 134-136, Keramikos (see map below) | Free entrance | R-17

Different rules apply when it gets this late at night» are the words of one of the countless characters the film’s hero encounters during his tangling night odyssey. Following the promise of a romantic meeting with a mysterious blonde, a computer programmer leaves the safety of his familiar environment to visit areas of the town that are completely unknown to him, probably because he was making sure to avoid them up until now. However, as the night falls, the city is transformed into a toxic world which reserves as many promises, as it does dangers.

The hero panics and gets trapped into a paranoiac and phobic trip, having as his sole consolation the first daylight. Nonetheless, Scorcese’s «After Hours» is not a horror film. It is a dark comedy on the absurd, where some of the most primitive human fears, and quite a few existential anxieties, fit into a sarcastic game against the spectator’s agony and expectations. Scorcese compiles all this in a playful and orchestrating manner, as if he is directing an adult, and sufficiently perverse, edition of the «Wizard of Oz»; running at high speed from one memorable scene to the next, looking desperately for the way back home, all the while stumling on a small masterpiece. Loukas Katsikas

Directed by: Martin Scorcese
Starring: Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Thomas Chong, Griffin Dunne, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, John Heard, Richard Cheech Marin, Catherine O'Hara
Year: 1985
Running Time: 97'