Aligned

To be a dancer is to be located very much in the physical, in the immediate – to connect with and respond to the world in a way that cinema isn’t always very good at getting to grips with. A keen dancer himself, director Apollo Bakopoulos takes a very physical approach to this film, with lots of close-up focus on bodies as a storytelling medium. Although there is a romance at the heart of the story, the focus is sensual more than sexual, the filmmaker interested in deeper connections which also tell us something about the protagonists’ connections to the classical past, in Athens, and the promise of the future, in New York.

We begin in the latter city, where Alex (Dimitris Fritzelas) is saying goodbye to the girlfriend he lives with before travelling to Athens to undertake his thesis in modern dance. His life in New York seems comfortable and contented, but there’s a hint of something missing, perhaps just because he’s at an uncertain point in his life where he doesn’t know how his career will develop. He also has a desire to connect with his ancestral past, and Bakopoulos, despite having lived in both cities, does a good job of capturing the excitement and wonder he feels on arrival, taking it all in with fresh eyes.

Arriving at the studio where he will be working, Alex instinctively gravitates to Aeneas (Panos Malakos) as a dance partner. They’re a similar build and it quickly emerges that they have similar ideas about how to approach their art. To an outsider, this type of work looks so intense and intimate that it’s difficult to understand how dancers keep their emotions from straying over the line. Alex and Aeneas are both professional about it, however, which is fortunate, because it quickly emerges that Aeneas’ apartment is where Alex is going to be staying.

Everything in this film is focused on beauty, from the landscapes Bakopoulos chooses to show us to the spacious apartment, the sun shining in through the studio windows, and the healthy, toned bodies of the young dancers. It’s an environment in which one might easily find oneself letting go of analytical thought, of wider concerns. Life is not perfect for Aeneas, however, as he struggles with anxiety and self-doubt. Although he mentions his sexuality early on, and viewers can guess where this is going (even if unaware of it screening at BFI Flare 2024, it takes a long time for anything concrete to happen. The two spend their spare time touring the city or enjoying the beach. The unspoken thing developing between them is expressed through brief glances, and through the dances they perform together and apart.

In its way, all this feels terribly old-fashioned, a flashback to the times when this was the only way that attraction between men could be addressed onscreen. The backlash against that era of censorship has been a blunt approach to the sexual realities of most modern relationships, but there’s something to be said for exploring this older approach again, as elegantly as Bakopoulos handles it, in the knowledge that there’s room for more.

Of course, it’s complicated by Alex’s existing commitment, and as such, he has a decision to make about the direction of his life. Pleasingly, Bakopoulos never conflates this with making choices about sexual identity. Bisexuality is taken for granted here. What is at stake is more personal and existential. Caught between past and future, Alex – and Aeneas too – must decide how much they are willing to commit to the now. In the process, they find themselves developing as artists, too, moving away from calculation and surrendering to the dance.