Rachel Suissa, writer and director of “Greek Mother’s Never Die”, says the film is a personal journey based on her Greek mother and the happenings in her own life. It started as a one woman show, then a television show and now a movie.
Twenty-five-year-old Ella (Abby Miner) was born in Greece to an American father and Greek mother Despina (Rachel Suissa). After the 2011 economic collapse of Greece, Ella and Despina leave for Amelia Island in Florida with a vibrant but small Greek community where Despina opens a gyro restaurant.
Ella unexpectedly reconnects with Nick a preteen first kiss friend, now a neurosurgeon at a nearby hospital, who had left Greece for the United States years prior to Ella arriving there.
Despina is a controlling, interfering, dramatic and guilt inducing mother all done, in her opinion, for love. An oft used technique for control that has lost its currency, is her ready to die with a heart attack when she is attempting to control a resisting Ella. Being entirely fed up with Despina’s death by heart attack technique Ella calls her bluff saying to her she should go ahead and die which she immediately does inflicting a massive tsunami of guilt to sweep over Ella. Although Despina is no longer, she reappears as a ghost visible only to Ella who talks to her having some questioning her mental fitness particularly neurosurgeon Nick who notices something odd about Ella on clips of a documentary a local film maker is making about Despina’s death.
From that point on it is a romcom with the shy and awkward Ella and rediscovered Nick a neurosurgeon at a local hospital. Sounding a bit like a Harlequin romance novel?
The luncheon scene with Ella having to much ouzo and the pre sex scene with Ella and Nick is hilarious!
A standard romcom with a topsy turvy Bollywoodish ending removing it from a classification as a mundane romcom. Let’s say the chief physician at Nick’s hospital and the gravedigger are not who they appear to be! Keep your eyes on those two.
Suissa leads the cast with a solid and free-spirited performance as a neurotic controlling mother. A typical Greek mother I think not but a mother with the best interests of her daughter in mind! Is there a stereotypical Greek mother? As an aside I was listening to a radio programme the other day with the caller saying at all Greek weddings we Greeks’ smash plates on the ground. I have attended Greek weddings both in Greece and North America and nary a plate was smashed. Classic stereotype being perpetuated.
The constant references by mother Despina to just about everything in life being a harbinger of cancer is tiring as well as the “Ah pa pa” (recited a bit too quickly from the way I customarily hear it). I suppose if you don’t have Windex as in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” you can replace that with cancer. Some spoofy stereotypes encountered in the film might be eating baklava at any time is good for you as it contains protein and fiber, olive oil being a cure for everything, marriage and childbearing obsession.
While there are some Greek actors in the production with minor roles, other than Suissa as Despina, the Greeklish spoken is very unauthentic although not as bad as in the atrocious Greek spoken by South Africans playing Greek villagers in the dreadful 2021 South African film “The Good Life”. You may not have the ear to detect authentic Greeklish but perhaps that is my keen culturally tuned ear influencing my perception of the film which should not detract you from enjoying the film but it cast a doubt in my mind about authenticity of the characters and perhaps of the entire film. Suissa is the authenticity that imparts necessary credibility to the film.
Again, I say Despina as a “typical” Greek mother is not accurate as they come in all shapes and sizes physically and character wise. I am content with the film being a recounting of Suissa’s experiences with her mother and with that it mind it really delivers. OPA!
Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcmYP19KAX4
Available On Demand 9May2025.
RKS 2025 Film Rating 78/100.
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