The Summer with Carmen review: Gay nudist beach drama full of restless, randy energy

Yorgos Tsiantoulas and Andreas Labropoulos in The Summer with Carmen (Image Cinebo)

The word-of-mouth breakout hit of last year’s BFI Flare queer film festival The Summer with Carmen finally gets a UK cinema release, bringing us a much-needed dose of Greek sunshine in the home stretch of a long winter. And some tanned flesh too: a gay nudist beach in Athens is an integral location in Zacharias Mavroeidis’s enjoyably playful debut feature, which takes its tonal cue from the restless, randy energy of that environment.

Revolving around dreamy ex-actor Demosthenes (Yorgos Tsiantoulas) and his aspiring filmmaker friend Nikitas (Andreas Labropoulos) as they delve through the past in search of inspiration for the latter’s first film, it’s a very meta affair indeed.

When Nikitas gets a directive from a

READ MORE OF THIS POST AT Attitude