of “Two tickets to Greece” Depressed and divorced French woman Brandine (Olivia Court) is encouraged by her son to take a trip to Greece with her middle school best friend, Magary (Laure Calamy), whom she lost touch with decades ago. Magary is now a freewheeling and impulsive music journalist who can find fun anywhere. Brandine is a straight-laced radiologist who resents her ex-husband’s remarriage, and she can’t seem to have any fun.
As teenagers, the two planned a trip to the Greek island of Amorgos and were captivated by the 1988 film Big Blue. However, when Magary skimps on ferry tickets, the barely reunited friends are ambushed on another small island populated almost exclusively by archaeologists and surfers. And while Magary turns any place into her makeshift disco on the fly, Brandine remains in the mud of the Aegean Sea, holding back her romance with a Belgian surfer.
Calamy has a decidedly lively part, and his energy always goes out when McGarry isn’t drawing attention to himself. When she and Brandine arrive in Mykonos, the film features mainly fluent French-speaking Kristin Scott-Thomas on board as Bijou, a hippie jewelry designer hiding from her British upper-class background. (And lives with an artist played by Panos Coronis from “The Lost Daughter” and “Before Midnight”).
Bijou serves not only as an informal referee and wisdom provider for the central pair, but also as a lucid commentator for writer-director Marc Fitussi. According to Bijou, Brandin–“bland”–and Magary never fully reconciled their conflicting instincts, but “two tickets to Greece”, even if the scenery wasn’t bad. But it’s still pretty goofy and unnatural.
2 tickets to Greece
Unrated. French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. at the theater.
