Chara (Angelika Papoulia) is the mother to a beautiful girl and happily married to Andreas (Andreas C. Tselopos), but she has regrets. She works at a local school and she feels that children should have been the one thing that changed her life and gave her everything that she ever wanted – but it hasn’t.
Instead, Chara spends all day and night in a constant state of crisis over who she wanted to be, who she became and whether what she wanted in life has really made her happy. Then one day she sees Melina (Joy Rieger) a troubled teenager who’s having problems at home with her mother and she decides that if she can’t be happy with herself then helping Melina will at least put on a happier path.
However, whatever Chara tries she starts to realise that the choices that she’s made in life may be the things she will have to live with.
Patchwork is a film from Cyprus about motherhood, regrets and the existential crisis of having gone too far to turn back. It’s often said that a woman will be fulfilled if she were to get married and have a child. Antiquated thoughts such as that have forced many women into lives that they didn’t want and were often due to other people’s decisions.
However, Chara is different as on the one hand her mind tells her that she’s got everything she’s ever wanted, but on the other hand she still isn’t fulfilled. Papoulia’s performance perfectly reflects this and as the film follows her from beginning to end, the audience is drawn in to how she must be feeling just by looking at her face.
Patchwork is also a beautifully shot film that sets a slow pace, but it only helps to bring the audience closer and whether you are a mother going through what she must be feeling or not, it’s hard not to empathise. The only problem is that Patchwork never seems to go deep enough to explain these feelings and Chara seemingly just accepts her state of mind rather than confronting it.
This leads to frustration and heart-break as the audience realises that she may never be the same again.
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