PEPPERMINT

Only through the medium of narrative film can you slip into someone else's life-arc, wear their past like a cloak, and for a few hours re-experience the pangs of first love, loss, dreams dreamt, deferred and recovered. Filmmaker Costas Kapakas accomplishes that magic with his captivating feature debut PEPPERMINT, a nostalgic drama set mostly in the mind of Stefanos, a middle-aged, divorced engineer who investigates air disasters for a living. An invitation to a reunion one night sends the takeoff signal for his own flight of memory as he drives to the party. The quiet man's extraordinary Mediterranean boyhood spans a wondrous series of tableaux: there's a wish made on a raven's tooth; a bittersweet bequest that results in a giddy taste of freedom; gentle first dance forbidden first kiss (with his first cousin, Marina); showing overachieving best pal Alexandros that, like airplanes, schoolbooks can be made to fly and crash to the ground. With its delirious child's eye-view imagery of things with wings, serendipity, longings and surprises, PEPPERMINT sticks with you. (In Greek with English subtitles).