TWO TICKETS TO GREECE (15)
★★★☆☆
Girls wanna have fun but have forgotten how in this coming-of-middle age French comedy drama.
It has been two years since electrotherapy technician Blandine (Olivia Cote) separated from her husband. He left her for a woman young enough to be a friend of their 20-year-old son Benjamin (Alexandre Desrousseaux).
The child fears his painfully uptight mother will become a recluse as he prepares to fly the nest. Consequently, Benjamin arranges a secret reunion for his mother and her schooldays best friend, Magalie (Laure Calamy).
They fly to Santorini to experience the dazzling blue waters of the Aegean. A disastrous ferry ride to Amorgos necessitates a detour to the small island of Kerinos, which has no tourist industry besides archaeological tour groups and surfers.
“I came for The Big Blue but I find myself in Point Break,” bitterly complains Blandine.
Narrative detours to islands in the Cyclades, southeast of mainland Greece, sustain a breezy pace and introduce colourful supporting characters to act as peacemakers between the central duo’s inevitable bickering. Kristin Scott Thomas materialises astride a quad bike after an hour as a British aristocrat by birth, nickname Bijou, who rejected a life of privilege in Kent to become a nomadic jewellery maker on Mykonos with an artist lover Dimitris (Panos Koronis).
Two Tickets To Greece offers an all-inclusive package deal of gentle laughter, dewy-eyed reminiscence and empowerment. Calamy and Cote are an appealing double act, the former embracing her firecracker’s casual attitude to full frontal nudity. Writer-director Marc Fitoussi’s tour of self-doubt following a relationship breakdown and trauma does not stray from a well-trodden path but the scenery is consistently gorgeous. Rebirth, reinvention and healing in a sun-baked crucible of civilisation.
■ In selected cinemas now