A stunning portrayal of vicarious traumatization.
No sooner has King Agamemnon of Mycenae returned victorious from the sacking of Troy than he's netted like prey and stabbed to death by his wife, Clytemnestra (Aleka Katselli), and her lover, Aegisthus (Fivos Ravi).
Clytemnestra exiles her daughter Electra (Irene Pappas) to a hardscrabble existence in the countryside with a peasant -- "In the name of the gods, is this your husband?" -- with whom she never consummates a marriage. This shattered woman lives for the day she can take revenge.
Ms. Pappas's performance, set against an austere landscape of hill, rock, and sky, is truly riveting. "No God hears me," Electra declares to a chorus of black-clad women who understand her rage.
Her scathing statements to Aegisthus after her brother has killed him while carousing ("Everyone knows that Aegisthus is a fervent disciple of Bacchus") keep a viewer at the edge of her seat. And then when she lures an exquisitely made-up Clytemnestra to her hut with a lie that she's given birth, and slams the door behind her as Cly grasps that she's been duped, well, it's devastating.
The royal siblings discover too late that killing "the mother who gave you life" is far different than dispatching her loathsome bedmate.
Electra did what she thought was right, but in the end we see she can never truly heal.
No sooner has King Agamemnon of Mycenae returned victorious from the sacking of Troy than he's netted like prey and stabbed to death by his wife, Clytemnestra (Aleka Katselli), and her lover, Aegisthus (Fivos Ravi).
Clytemnestra exiles her daughter Electra (Irene Pappas) to a hardscrabble existence in the countryside with a peasant -- "In the name of the gods, is this your husband?" -- with whom she never consummates a marriage. This shattered woman lives for the day she can take revenge.
Ms. Pappas's performance, set against an austere landscape of hill, rock, and sky, is truly riveting. "No God hears me," Electra declares to a chorus of black-clad women who understand her rage.
Her scathing statements to Aegisthus after her brother has killed him while carousing ("Everyone knows that Aegisthus is a fervent disciple of Bacchus") keep a viewer at the edge of her seat. And then when she lures an exquisitely made-up Clytemnestra to her hut with a lie that she's given birth, and slams the door behind her as Cly grasps that she's been duped, well, it's devastating.
The royal siblings discover too late that killing "the mother who gave you life" is far different than dispatching her loathsome bedmate.
Electra did what she thought was right, but in the end we see she can never truly heal.