I decided to do a small tribute to the film production of Renos Charalambidis, "Cheap Cigarettes". A film which was finally recognized many years later and which, in my opinion, is a "hymn" to romance. Something that I believe our days suffer from a certain lack of.

The film presents Nikos, a thirty-year-old unemployed man who lives alone without a partner, out of conviction. He is surrounded by different types of people, such as the owner of the café he frequents, Telis (a regular patron and chatterbox), his friend, a cynic who encourages Telis in his pursuit of a woman, and Manolis, who is an adventurer, willing to get involved in the most unexpected situations. Eventually, Nikos meets Sophia, a beautiful, confident young woman from the fashion industry, in a phone booth. They wander around the city together one night and part ways. He will seek her out again, as his surroundings no longer inspire him.

And towards the end of the film and under a certain plane tree, at dawn and in the centre of Athens, a kiss is presented that never happened. A kiss that never found its way. This is because the hero, as the bastard of romance, decides that their erotic encounter should not be completed and remain pending. Because romance, in order to be romance (as Charalambides mentions in an interview), does not have to be productive. It must not lead to success. The hero therefore ensures the failure of the encounter by himself. And Sophia, disappearing into the horizon as August 1999 dawns.

Then we see Niko, thinking in a dark room, smoking cheap cigarettes, and the following words come to his mind:

"And I close my eyes and through the crowd, there comes a sea. Out of the sea comes the fluttering of birds. Through the fluttering, you will come. Let me impress you."

And a trolleybus passes by while Sophia is waiting at the bus stop. A trolley that Nikos has filled with pigeons and hung bags full of water and goldfish. After Sophia gets on the trolley, she meets Nikos and they exchange a tender kiss, amidst the fluttering of birds and while the song "White My Jasmine" by Elli Paspala plays. And then the credits roll.

All of this was nothing more than a product of the thoughts he had at the end of the film. It was his wish, his wish for how that meeting should turn out, culminating in the kiss they never had on the night they met. It's the fantasy that arises from repulsion, the unfulfilled desire "to impress her." But in reality, on that one night, there was no follow-up. Their acquaintance was limited to a single walk, sudden and brief, like a shower, as he admits at the beginning of the film. And why would it have been any other way? Sophia, after all, was "dating" the writer Laertes.

"I would so much like to impress you. Our one night was sudden and brief, like a rainstorm. I didn't even have time to start. I didn't even have time to tell you my unique quality. I'm a collector. I collect the hardest and wildest stuff in the world. Moments. When I have this sudden desire to fly, and I have nowhere to fly, I hide in my collection. Full of coffee, boxers, dancers, random touches, curses, swearing, tender outlaws, arcades, meetings, screams, silences, separations, words, words, words... Anyway, things will go the way they want them to. Life knows and I trust it. I'm one of those who always smoked cheap cigarettes."

~ Nikos (Renos Charalambidis, Cheap Cigarettes, 2000)