‘Two Tickets to Greece’ Review: Advisory Travel

In “Two Tickets to Greece,” Blandine (Olivia Côte), a depressed and divorced Frenchwoman, is pushed by her son to take a Hellenic tour with Magalie (Laure Calamy), the middle-school finest pal she misplaced contact with many years earlier. Magalie, now a free-spirited, impulsive music journalist, can discover enjoyable anyplace. Blandine, a buttoned-up radiology technician embittered by her ex-husband’s remarriage, appears incapable of experiencing enjoyable in any respect.

As youngsters, the 2 had deliberate to journey to the Greek island Amorgos, which entranced them within the 1988 film “The Big Blue.” But when Magalie skimps on ferry tickets, the hardly reunited friends wind up waylaid on a unique, tiny island populated nearly completely by archaeologists and surfers. And whereas Magalie will flip any location right into a makeshift disco, Blandine, who refrains from a fling with a Belgian surfer, stays a stick within the Aegean mud.

Calamy has by far the livelier half, and the power dissipates every time Magalie isn’t drawing consideration to herself. When she and Blandine attain Mykonos, the film brings aboard Kristin Scott Thomas — largely talking fluent French — as Bijou, a hippie jewellery designer hiding from a British upper-crust background (and dwelling with an artist performed by Panos Koronis, of “The Lost Daughter” and “Before Midnight”).

Bijou turns into an unofficial referee and knowledge dispenser for the central pair, in addition to a facile expository machine for the writer-director, Marc Fitoussi. Blandine — “bland,” per Bijou — and Magalie by no means completely reconcile their conflicting instincts, however “Two Tickets to Greece” remains to be fairly dopey and contrived, even when the surroundings isn’t dangerous.

Two Tickets to Greece
Not Rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters.