No man is an island, except, perhaps, a man who owns one. The alienating, even dehumanizing effects of extreme wealth and privilege are brought to bear in “The Birthday Party,” a grim little kinda-Greek tragedy that, despite a lengthy guest list, may as well be a one-man show. The latest feature by Spanish writer-director Miguel Ángel Jiménez functions chiefly as an ode to the many menacing screen moods of one Willem Dafoe, cast as a cold-blooded 1970s shipping magnate plainly modeled on Aristotle Onassis, albeit with the kind of dark, gnarled glamor that the big O himself could only dream of. Brooding, glowering and sometimes even speak-singing his way through proceedings, Dafoe is rarely less than compelling; the same cannot be said, however, for the leaden film around him.
Adapted from a well-regarded 2007 novel by Greek writer Panos Karnezis, “The Birthday Party” may honor the Aegean milieu of the text, but there’s an overriding air of Europudding placelessness to this Greek-Spanish-Dutch-British co-production with an accomplished if underserved multinational cast. That somewhat softens the specific satirical bite of the source material, with Karnezis’ detailed mirroring of Onassis’ life story largely excised in the screenplay — along with reams of backstory feeding into the weekend-spanning timeline of the central narrative. What’s left feels both dramatically and emotionally sparse, despite escalatingly cruel actions and consequences. Dafoe’s presence and a distinctively baleful island ambience represent the chief selling points of this predominantly feel-bad exercise, premiering in Locarno’s Piazza Grande program.
A brief prologue introduces terse tycoon Marco Timoleon (Dafoe) at his lowest personal ebb, responding with dour stoicism to the news that his teenage son — and favorite child — has been killed in a seaplane crash. Heavy rain lashes into the water surrounding his private island; cut to a decade or so later, and the weather has improved but a lowering atmosphere remains, signaled by the plunging shadows and pewtery finish of Gris Jordana’s lensing. It’s late summer, even if the temperature seems to drop in any room Timoleon enters, and the island is about to be more populated than it’s been in many a year. Timoleon’s daughter and sole surviving heir Sofia (Vic Carmen Sonne, Danish star of last year’s “The Girl With the Needle”) is turning 25, and he’s marking the occasion with an extravagant party.
Among those in attendance is principled doctor Patrikios (Christos Stergioglou), a former close ally of Timoleon’s. He’s surprised to be invited after years of estrangement, though he learns his services are required for most unsavory reasons. A more obvious invitee is young British writer Forster (“Peaky Blinders” star Joe Cole), given that he’s both writing a biography of Timoleon and having a fling with Sofia, which turns out to be an even stickier conflict of interests than you might imagine. Also present is Olivia (Emma Suarez), Sofia’s stepmother and soon to be Timoleon’s ex-wife, plus a host of friends, foes and in-between acquaintances who clutter the story without really advancing it.
Chiefly, this is a study of a father-daughter relationship soured by grief and parental partiality: Timoleon cannot conceal his preference for the child he lost, to the point that Sofia wonders aloud if he wishes her dead instead. That doesn’t stop him, however, from wielding stifling control over her adult life, when a major secret she has been harboring comes to light. Sonne matches Dafoe’s intensity with a clenched, internally ruined air, though it’s a little hard to identify in her the feckless party girl that others speak of. Yet the power in these two performances isn’t supplemented by much texture in the stern, declamatory writing: There’s little sense of how this relationship functions, or once functioned, outside these particularly fraught scenes.
What grip the film exerts is largely down to its clammy sensory qualities: the salty humidity felt in Jordana’s compositions, the ostentatious proportions and forbidding dimness of Myrte Beltman’s production, the sweaty sallowness of one face after another. Alexandros Livitsanos and Prins Obi’s score is suitably, disconcertaingly stark and atonal, setting the tone for the film’s most peculiar sonic coup: Dafoe’s muttered, distinctly unmusical recitation of the old Nina Simone standard “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good,” he intones, his delivery casting doubt on every word in that lyric — beginning with the “soul” part.