In The Strange Pursuit Of Laura Durand

A thing learnt, when it comes to reviewing films, is “never give up.” As casual sofa surfer, yours is the luxury of tuning in, falling out with the on-screen goings on and…heading for the exit five minutes later. Not so when reviewing: one has an obligation to watch; to see if it gets better; and sometimes it does.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that In The Strange Pursuit Of Laura Durand is not as bad as it seems. It does get better. Though - spoiler alert! - not that much.

It is a film variously billed as road movie, comedy and, for my part, quest. It tells the tale of two not especially likeable nerds, Antonis Titsanis (Makis Papadimitriou) and Christos Fertakis (Michalis Sarantis), who are obsessed by a Nineties porn star, known to the world as Laura Dennard (Anna Kalaitzidou).

Is that her name? Who knows? Because almost nothing is known about the real Laura, beyond the fact that she disappeared 15 years previously. This is cause for serious consternation to our two budding heroes, who decide that, in spite of some major obstacles, like being totally lacking in both money and social graces, they are the ones who will track her down.

Okay. This is ever so slightly creepy and, it is fair to say, at various points in the film we dip into creepiness. After all, this is two guys deciding that a woman famous for being objectified, who likely disappeared in order to avoid unwelcome attention, is fair game for their sub-Arthurian adventure. Not so much rescuing a damsel in distress, as bothering someone who’d rather not…

On the plus side, it mostly did not descend into porn movie creepiness. Porn star, Laura may have been, but pretty much the entirety of the images on screen would pass muster as PG rated. The one supposed extract from a porn film to grace the screen brought a smile to my lips: a scenario in which a famous actress welcomes a shower engineer into her home, explaining with a smile and knowing glance to camera that she needs it to work, because her best friend has popped over to take a shower. Of course she did.

It also gets a bit more of a pass on the creep scale for the fact that the decision to pursue Laura is prompted by a variety of spooky, other-worldly visions. What? Is Laura intervening from beyond the grave? Maybe she is…

Then they’re off on a journey that introduces them to a bunch of beach-living hippies, who also double as voodoo cult, an exceedingly sinister older woman who may or may not have arranged for her husband to “have an accident”; and a wise old, angry old mystic-cum-guru.

Why? It is never quite clear what is going on. There is a tension between two worlds here. On the one hand the realistic world in which their van keeps breaking down, Christo is awaiting a diagnosis for cancer, and they are both broke; and the somewhat weirder worldscape into which they increasingly descend, populated by horror/B-movie rejects.

There are far more questions than answers. One can only presume that this was intended by director/writer Dimitris Bavellas. But still: why?

Yes, it got better. That said, it could hardly have gotten worse. The start point is a pair of less than attractive guys who appear not even to like one another much. Sure, that is the stuff of many buddy movies: the well-trod arc leading rivals, enemies to end up as best friends. This, though, is not exactly that. Our 'heroes', the director seems to be seeing, are pretty low, in every sense.

Worse, they know it: and since neither can improve personally, they turn their self-loathing on one another.

In addition to the creepy/stalkerish vibe to the project as a whole is a resolution that some might consider sends a less than wholesome message: that when life sucks, where better to retreat to than the comfort of cheesy Nineties porn movies?

Despite this, it would be remiss of me not to mention that In The Strange Pursuit Of Laura Durand has managed to pick up a handful of awards. Though seeing as one of those is for the somewhat niche category of Best Foreign Road Film, that may be less of an achievement than it seems. It is a road movie. It is also a comedy and it has its moment. Every now and then my lips curled in an unexpected smile: though most of the humour is subtle, built around appreciation of film tropes, camera angles and such like. Blink and you’ll miss it.

It starts very slow, but is not, in the end, complete disaster.