THE BEDEKEPER (L'APICULTEUR) has a straightforward plot involving the odyssey of a former schoolteacher Spyros (Marcello Mastrioanni), who embarks on a journey by lorry all over Greece and its islands to chase the honey. He ends up in his former home, now deserted, and frequents a now-deserted cinema. On the way he picks up a young girl (Nadia Mournuzi) with whom he has an on-off affair before she leaves him to embark on her travels once more.Set during the early spring, Theo Angelopoulos's film evokes a world coming to life after its winter hibernation - of showers, watery sunshine and pinkish sunsets setting over mountainous rural landscapes. Such images of future promise contrast starkly with Spyros's mental state; his beekeeping business is in decline, his wife Anna (Jenny Roussea) no longer lives with him, while he has become estranged from his daughter. It seems that he embarks on an apparently never-ending road trip because he believes he has to rather than of his own own volition.Unable to express himself except through physical acts, Spyros remains perpetually alienated from the landscape and the people inhabiting it. He visits several local communities, all of whom enjoy collective experiences of sitting outside, sipping their drinks and gossiping happily; but he can never involve himself in their lives. He remains an outsider, the object of cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis's penetrating gaze.Despite Mastrioanni's masterly performance notable mostly for its stillness rather than action, L'APICULTEUR proves an unpleasant cinematic experience. Spyros has done something in the past to alienate himself from his family; there is a suggestion that he is a actually a pedophile. On his daughter's wedding day he gathers her up in her arms in such a way as to denote excessive affection; later on he makes love to the girl on the cinema stage by smothering her, in spite of her repeated entreaties to let her go. It's as if he cannot endure the sight of young people as they remind him of his own mortality; hence he needs to deflower them of their innocence.The cinema-image is also significant, suggesting the desire to exhibit all his seamier qualities in public. Angelopoulous intensifies that sense with a scopophilic obsession with photographing the girl in the nude, the camera lovingly tracking the contours of her body in a series of shots taken from Spyros's point of view. In the end we wonder whether she functions solely as an object of the director's and the leading character's misogyny.The mood is one of unrelenting intensity that seems particularly redolent of the mid-Eighties, a time when anti-feminism was much more of an issue in Europe than it might be today. L'APICULTEUR 's certainly an art-house film, but one whose shortcomings need to be pointed out.

"The Beekeeper" (1986) is Theo Angelopoulos' seventh film and features leading man Marcello Mastroianni. The minimal and meaningless plot (following the disintegration of his family, a beekeeper embarks on a trip and has an on/off affair with a young girl) is an excuse for Angelopoulos to indulge in his trademark semi-poetic images of Greek rural and urban landscapes.A few of the sequences stick out, but most are unremarkable (and there's too much deja-vu about them, all Angelopoulos films are pretty much the same). There is very little action, very little dialog, too much boredom, too much doodling. This is the definition of pretentious art-house pomp.

Wonderfully poetic movie, the images of which (gas stations, industrial grounds, and lots of rain) stick in one's mind. This film about a middle aged man searching for some meaning in his otherwise empty life is made the more poetic and unforgettable by the magnificently melancholic music of Eleni Karaindrou.

A middle aged teacher retires from his career, dedicates himself to his hobby, and embarks on a journey through Greece with his colony of bees in his lorry. Along the way he picks up a young woman hitch hiker, and a relationship develops between them that explores the depths of personal loneliness and and alienation.Both Spiros and his young passenger have lost their perspective of the future - he is living in nostalgic reminiscence of the past, while the young girl's life is one of instant gratification, she seems to be aware of neither past nor future. Their inherent inner isolation expresses itself in a series of futile, almost savagely physical attempts at forming real contact with each other, that leaves the viewer with a harrowing picture of disturbed, painful existence.This is a slow, carefully composed film, a sequence of memorable images, some visually beautiful, others showing the gritty harshness of life. There is a constant shifting between dreams and realities that leaves what actually happens shrouded in doubt, and a moody atmosphere of nostalgia that pervades the whole film.An exceptional film that should not be missed by patient and observant people interested in the exploration of human feelings.