A Trip to Greece

A Trip to Greece is the sixth European-trip movie  Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan have made (with director Michael Winterbottom) in 10 years. That sets up the obvious parallel with Odysseus’s 10-year return home from the Trojan Wars. 

  Playing fictionalized versions of themselves, the two British stars deliver their own version of the archetypal epic. They land somewhere between Homer and Joyce. 

Perhaps the film’s key motif is the photography scene in the old amphitheatre.  Bantering as ever, they swap the classic masks of comedy and tragedy. Steve briefly resumes his affair with the beautiful young photographer 

The film ends on that fork. On the comedy side, Rob enjoys an idyllic reunion with his wife, Sally, freed from both their parental duties and their separation. 

To Steve falls the tragic: his father dies so he has to fly home early. He takes melancholy refuge in the home he left his ex-wife.  Their hug reminds him of his loss.  

This double vision of life makes this perhaps the most touching of the series. We get the familiar elements of the travelogue: the spectacular scenery, the mouth-watering national foods, the pretty women viewed — perhaps regrettably as usual — through the cocky banter of men still boys. 

The two men’s competitive teasing is amusing as ever, but now there are more jokes about their aging. There’s an intensity in their ostensibly playful race. Now Steve even has Bergmanic dreams, as if his real-life success as a more serious actor has brought a psychic vulnerability. 

A dark shadow threatens the film’s comic element early. Our heroes drop an acquaintance off at a massive refugee camp, secured with concrete walls and barbed wire. The  two buddies speculate about its horrors. But we don’t go in. They drive away, staving off the intrusion of the tragic side of life — for a while. 

Both men have a knack for impersonating famous actors. They compete at it, amusingly and even brilliantly. A whole conversation can be conducted in these guises. All the while they’re impersonating others, though, we know they are impersonating themselves. The outside scenes remind us this is a scripted drama and for all their personal infusions they are acting roles. 

Indeed the men’’s compulsive role-playing may betray their essential insubstantiality. They seem able to engage with each other — and with others — only by playing at being others. Even when Rob embraces Sally his emotion is filtered through play. As the jokes about their driving encapsulate, both men need to be in control. And that means staving off seriousness, openness, suppressing their emotional lives as long as possible. 

Perhaps that’s the point of their comic role-playing here. The masks of Greek tragedy are the faces we live. We may enjoy some comedy but the presiding, profound vision is the tragic. The real tragedy may not be death but the failure to live connected to our deepest self.