Former middle-school friends with clashing temperaments take an Aegean excursion in this contrived French fluff.
In “Two Tickets to Greece,” Blandine (Olivia Côte), a depressed and divorced Frenchwoman, is pushed by her son to take a Hellenic excursion with Magalie (Laure Calamy), the middle-school best friend she lost touch with decades earlier. Magalie, now a free-spirited, impulsive music journalist, can find fun anywhere. Blandine, a buttoned-up radiology technician embittered by her ex-husband’s remarriage, seems incapable of experiencing fun at all.
As teenagers, the two had planned to travel to the Greek island Amorgos, which entranced them in the 1988 movie “The Big Blue.” But when Magalie skimps on ferry tickets, the barely reunited pals wind up waylaid on a different, tiny island populated almost exclusively by archaeologists and surfers. And while Magalie will turn any location into a makeshift disco, Blandine, who refrains from a fling with a Belgian surfer, remains a stick in the Aegean mud.
Calamy has by far the livelier part, and the energy dissipates whenever Magalie isn’t drawing attention to herself. When she and Blandine reach Mykonos, the movie brings aboard Kristin Scott Thomas — largely speaking fluent French — as Bijou, a hippie jewelry designer hiding from a British upper-crust background (and living with an artist played by Panos Koronis, of “The Lost Daughter” and “Before Midnight”).
Bijou becomes an unofficial referee and wisdom dispenser for the central pair, as well as a facile expository device for the writer-director, Marc Fitoussi. Blandine — “bland,” per Bijou — and Magalie never totally reconcile their conflicting instincts, but “Two Tickets to Greece” is still pretty dopey and contrived, even if the scenery isn’t bad.
Two Tickets to Greece
Not Rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
