![]() ![]() ![]() There’s little spark to any of the performances, even the ones meant to twinkle. Lazy bureaucrats, tribal locals, a love-hate relationship with tourists and other outsiders are all trotted out in this cut-and-paste screenplay. The entire movie’s a collection of cutesy cliches and Greek stereotypes. It plays as a perfunctory invention here. Too many movies have already been made about a lovelorn woman finding a hot younger Greek lover that it’d be a shock if Rondini didn’t provide one ( Sven Ruygrok). ![]() “The village has given you the evil eye,” he declares, and considering the tea-leaf reading, spitting in her presence and gossip (in Greek) in her absence, Olive has to assume he’s right. And nobody will speak to her about her parents, the past or their history there.Īn Albanian refugee ( Caleb Payne) boy is her sole confidante, go-between with the merchants and advisor. But the old bitties of the village won’t sell her mosquito netting or anything else that will allow her to camp on the house’s ruins. A man tells her where the house is…or was. That’s also the vibe Olive picks up on in the tiny seaside town. Olive will “get away,” go see the old house in the old village, over mother Athena’s testiest objections. No, Mom will “never go back.” That settles it. Mom and Dad fled Greece “after the coup.” Dad still has a house there. In the middle of a snippy exchange with her mother and family friends over “How did you come to South Africa,” Olive has her answer. The shock of how quickly John moves on rattles Olive further. Disapproving snipes from her recently-widowed mother (Jennifer Steyn) are no help. She’s checking her messages constantly, hoping to close the deal with this on-again/off-again guy who might be “the one.”īut John dumps her, by text, and that’s that. Olive ( Erica Wessels) is a 30something Cape Town dental hygienist with her mind on love, even when her hands are cleaning some little old man’s teeth. But the picture’s limp story, indifferent direction and static pacing do it in. South African casting director turned writer-director Bonnie Rondini excels in her specialty, populating this picture with a diverse selection of South African actors and some passably authentic looking and sounding Greeks (everybody speaks English, mostly). Hey, any port will do in a pandemic storm, right? It’s a downbeat romantic comedy that summons few laughs, even if it manages to deliver a little romance, even if it does a passable job of passing a coastal town in South Africa off a a quaint Greek village. And as anybody knows, “time seems to stand still” isn’t something we look for in a movie. “Good Life” is movie about such a getaway that mimics that stasis. You lose track of the days, the deadlines, the impending day of departure. On a good vacation, time seems to stand still. ![]()
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