Ariane Labed,Evangelia Randou in Attenberg (2010)
A boldly conceived assemblage of diverse and seemingly random fictional materials, Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg is concerned with nothing less than those hardy perennials: sex, death, and modernity. And coming of age a little too late. Ariane Labed stars as Marina, a twentysomething naïf living in a small Greek city whose inexperience in all matters sexual is mirrored by her disgust for the act. In the film's semi-notorious, heavily stylized opening sequence, Marina's only friend, the sexually frivolous Bella (Evangelia Randou), teaches her how to kiss. As Tsangari frames the pair perpendicular to the camera against an abstract background, the two engage in a display of excessive tonguing so comically exaggerated that it only furthers Marina's disgust. "You're all slobbery. I'm going to throw up," she says, before the young women give in to a round of improvised and manic play, spitting and blowing raspberries at each other, then squaring off in a mime of feral cats.