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The Last Homecoming Movie Review

The Last Homecoming is a 2008 Cypriot historical drama film directed by Corianna Avraamidou. It’s a charming, solid feature.

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“I never found out what happened to my friends“

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Orestes and his fiancée Alexandra travel from Greece to Cyprus to visit Orestes’s family in the summer of 1974. Orestes’s brother Stefanos and Alexandra, who are both involved in the Enosis movement become attracted to each other. When Stefanos is captured, Manolis, who still loves Stefanos’ mother Phaedra, helps him escape the Kyrenia Castle, but is himself killed.

The movie ends just when the Turkish invasion of Cyprus begins, thus it succeeds as this very interesting period piece that starts off lightweight, but then turns very dark toward the end. The final third was so memorable that I wanted more of that interesting politics and suspense in the entire film. I was personally reminded of Italy’s ‘Mediterraneo’ while watching this flick. It’s a similarly atmospheric, light and charming period piece that the Academy usually eats up, so their snubbing of this movie is odd.

The Last Homecoming is very tiresome in its love triangle storyline. I usually dislike this type of plot, and here that was also the case. Although it was solidly executed, I simply did not care for it. I did like the characters, though. They were quite charming, I liked their interactions and some of the romantic moments were very sweet and sensual.

The same sensuality is achieved in the movie’s arresting visuals. Cyprus is a gorgeous island country and this movie’s highlight was seeing the coastal imagery and especially that cave sequence, which was to me stunning. The score is also good, the direction is solid and the acting is fine.

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However, the film was slight in terms of storytelling. It did not explore its historical period all that well, instead focusing on the lightweight elements of romance and family relationships. I liked those, but they made the film far from sophisticated. Still, it is undeniable that the flick is charming, especially in terms of characters, tone and a strong familial emphasis to it. The runtime was overly short and thus the movie was too simple in its narrative with not enough themes explored or memorable dialogue in it, but as fun escapism, it succeeds in spades unquestionably.