Joe Cortese Stars In Here’s Yianni!: Premieres At Dances With Films NYC
“Remarkable reenactment by Joe Cortese of a very serious disease that needs more attention. I am sure Here’s Yianni! will bring more awareness to the impacted population.”
Synopsis: Here’s Yianni! by Christina Eliopoulos. A virtually graceful cast turns out to be the secret ingredient of a script inspired by the true story of the parents of the young Greek-born director greca. From his father, struck by an early and inexorable form of vascular dementia, but also by the love of his mother, constantly remaining at his side. And from the image of a resisting couple, of a love that transforms and renews itself through the course of an unpredictable, tiring and cruel disease, the author thus traces the portrait of her own, but also that of the Hellenic community of New Jersey, with all its habits and its peculiar, irresistible oddities. The seafront of Seaside Heights, known by many of us only thanks to the success of the reality of MTV Jersey Shore, therefore becomes the scene of a tragic and picaresque journey, without excluding either the most comic (and tragicomic) or the most unpredictable glimpses of tenderness. Or maybe, what David Foster Wallace called “raw, pristine kindness.”
As really happened to the director’s father, the protagonist of Here’s Yianni!, played by the extraordinary Italian-American actor Joe Cortese, also experiences a very strange phenomenon with the onset of dementia. As he begins to suddenly lose contact with reality, confusing more and more the plans of truth and imagination, and especially those that separate the perception of the present, the past and the future, he also begins to project himself, his beloved wife and anyone who happens to him in focus on his favorite talk show. The conductor, here played by Eric Roberts, becomes his most faithful ally in a series of imaginary episodes, which he also lives live as if they were absolutely real, with sometimes hilarious, other deeply moving. The man relives in fact a random collection of the crucial moments of his existence: from the long journey by ship that as a child has taken him from Greece to the American dream, to the fatal encounter with the woman who is the love of his life to the premature death of their only son, Alexandros. In a magnificent sequence, a very great Julia Ormond enters their Church, that of the Greek Orthodox faith community, asking directly to God for misfortune, misfortune and misfortune always rage on them. So that I can’t distribute them a little more around. And this example is just one of the many, brilliant highlights of a film that certainly targets a popular target, but which also remains illuminated by a good writing and above all by its incredible, impeccable interpreters.
The history of our Yianni thus finds the epicenter in his diner, the restaurant he represented and represents the concrete realization of his personal American dream. A dream that of course has not excluded fatigue, commitment, finding moments of the bitterest disappointment. Even the couple’s best friends, played by Kevin Pollak and Rosanna Arquette, will not be perfect or ideal beings at all. Their first impact with the disease, with the new Yianni who is no longer able to sit trivially at a table for drinking, eating and conversing with them, is not at all positive. And as often happens, selfishness and rejection of a shocking illness leads them at first to make not one but many steps back: do not help, do not contribute as one expects from the oldest and dearest friends. But the heart of the film, in addition to Yianni, always remains his wife Plousia, able daily to take care of everything, finding time even to process the pain and disappointment and mediate with the sensitivity, mistakes and shortcomings of others, in order to guarantee to her husband day after day a life that remains not only dignified but worthy of being lived until the last second. And without of course revealing spoilers or other details about the plot, we can only add that our journey, as spectators, from the beginning to the end remains full of surprises, strong emotions and ideas for continuous reflection.
