Worlds Apart

The film tells three separate love stories, and in each one a Greek meets a foreigner. Three generations, three stages of life, one country: Greece as economic collapse reshapes ordinary life. The strands run apart and converge into a single narrative at the end. Christopher Papakaliatis both directs and acts. J.K. Simmons is in the cast, carrying the quietest section as a retired expatriate. Papakaliatis does not use the crisis as set dressing: migration, unemployment and the rise of the far right work their way into the stories themselves. The structure is deliberately symmetrical, each romance matched to an age and to a particular kind of foreignness. Who it's for: Viewers who like interlocking multi-strand narratives and contemporary European drama. Who it's not for: The emotional beats are underlined and the ending plays openly for effect. The symmetry can also feel too neat, more design than life.