Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers

Saturday, 31^st December 2016

by Maria Kallimani (teacher, Greece)

Greek actor and director, Thodoris Atheridis, has created a very good adaptation of the very successful Italian movie «Perfetti Sconosciuti», which has been awarded 5 Italian “Oscars” (David di Donatello awards), about seven long-time friends who get together for a dinner. When they decide to share with each other the content of every text message, email and phone call they receive, many secrets start to unveil and the good friends prove not to have been exactly honest with each other.

In a warm summer evening, a loving couple, Thomas, a plastic surgeon and his wife, Martha, a therapist, are expecting their long-lasting friends to share a pleasant evening over dinner. The bell rings and it is Giorgos and Ersi, followed subsequently by Aleko and Lina; the only one missing is Achilleas, their friend who is still single. Before long, the group is complete and without any delay, they begin the feast. Surely, this is a nice but somewhat usual dinner, when suddenly someone makes a suggestion: to place their mobile phones on the table and play a game like Russian roulette. Whatever message is received (texts, What’s App messages, calls) should be shared by all of them. Clearly, this uncommon “truth or dare” game has no point among friends who share everything with each other. Nevertheless, when the phones start ringing, who will be the one with the sweatiest palms?

I saw the Greek version of the film last night and I think it is really a very clever idea with funny and realistic dialogues, interesting twists in the plot and a rather “bitter-sweet” ending, which leaves you thinking about human relations and what people choose to make of their lives.

Out of all the things said and commented by the characters, I was mostly struck by a hero describing their smart-phones as the “black boxes” of their lives. I thought this to be a very accurate analogy. All information that is important to us, all important information about us, all our precious memories and all our secrets are recorded, stored and dispersed by these small pieces of equipment. We do everything to fill up our little “black boxes”. After all, they have limitless storing space, they are lightweight and we can carry them with us everywhere. Then, we can use them to brag about our “full” lives. We can show people pictures of our sweat-heart, our children or our holidays.

Soon, they will even replace our “full’’ wallets. Recently, I’ve seen some TV spots, showing people using their smart phones to pay for goods and services. I’ve even seen a spot on the Internet about a huge store that won’t even have cashiers’ desks and long queues of upset customers any more. We will find what we want to buy, wave our smart phone in front of it, take it and leave the store. The amount of money will electronically be taken out of our electronic accounts.

Really smart machines, produced by and for a really smart society. No more angry customers waiting in line, while the one in front of them is picking his pockets for change. Because, the way I see it, in the future of our “prospering’’ western globalised economy the majority of the working population – which will be the minority of the general population, anyway, considering unemployment and poverty rates worldwide – will only be having some change to go shopping with. No more “lazy” and “rude” cashiers, either. Just some more redundant personnel, just some more unemployed people, with not enough “money” in their wallets-smart phones, to go shopping with!

Never mind that, though! We are used to getting by with less, by now. After all, money isn’t everything. Feelings matter most. Life is full of so many beautiful, happy, little moments. Let’s concentrate on “saving” our lives in our little “black boxes”. That way we will always remember the glorious sunset by the beach in the summer; or our son’s winning shot in the school basketball finals; or our daughter’s wedding. We have them all on video; we watched them through our smart phone’s camera. But not with our own eyes! As if they wouldn’t have happened, if we hadn’t “saved” them. Or would they?

What has actually happened to us? What have we lived through? Does our life consist of what we have “saved” in our smart-phone and uploaded on our facebook profile? Is this our real life or a simulation? Is this our real “face” or our “Dorian Gray’s portrait”? A virtual face – photoshoped and enhanced – and a virtual life in a virtual world; much better and much happier than the real world, where there are no music jingles to add to our videos and no colourful stickers to decorate our comments with.

But in the real world we can actually sing and dance with each other and we can “decorate” our comments with a smile or a frown. And most important, we have to be there and actually sense the impact of our smile or frown on the other person’s feelings. So, in the real world we have to think twice before we smile or frown. We have to think twice about what we say and what we do, because we will have to deal with the other person’s reactions to out words and actions. And then and there – in the real world – we will realize that our lives are not about us, but about the others around us and how we relate to them. And then we might start trying to enhance our soul and our attitude towards them and not just our profile photo in our social media pages. And, hopefully, we might start trying to improve the real world, instead of seeking refuge in our colourful digital virtual world.