In an interview for the Sydney Film Festival in 2011, Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari observed that audiences have a range of responses to her second feature, Attenberg (2010):

Film critics, for their part, responded positively to Tsangari’s film. Almost without exception, however, their praise came with caveats and descriptors that indicate the complex tonal experience of Attenberg and the oddly unsettling nature of Tsangari’s work. Boyd van Hoeij calls Attenberg ‘a captivating and vaguely disturbing experience’, Peter Bradshaw describes the film as ‘almost unwatchably strange’, whereas David Stratton calls Attenberg ‘funny’, ‘disturbing’ and ‘wonderfully done’. Tsangari’s follow-up short film The Capsule (2012) drew similar responses. Following its screening at the Locarno Film Festival, Eric Kohn described the short as a film of ‘lively, shocking abstractions’, whereas Rod Machen calls The Capsule a story ‘dealing with absurdity, cruelty, and sometimes joy’. Such write-ups characterise Tsangari’s work as an eccentric mix: as weird and off-beat, but also funny, compelling and original.

This tonal complexity demands closer investigation. As I have discussed throughout this book, women’s provocations can be unwatchable, beautiful and obscene. Attenberg and The Capsule demonstrate that they can also be mixed with humour. Existing critical discussions of Tsangari’s work persistently associate her with a spate of films that emerged out of Greece in the first decade of the twenty-first century named by critic Steve Rose as the Greek ‘weird wave’. These ‘brilliantly strange’ films are united by their bizarre plot scenarios, absurdist humour, unusual character behaviour, mannered performances and an estranging, non-naturalistic style.