GREEK PETE

United Kingdom, 2009
Director: Andrew Haigh
Stars: Peter Pittaros, Lewis Wallis

Official Website

Greek Pete follows a year in the life of Peter Pittaros, a (low)rent boy who moves to London in search of maximum clientele and the nice things that wealthy people own. He falls into a slight relationship with Lewis Wallis, his sensitive colleague, and they try to live together while fielding calls from prospective clients and hosting in-calls in the bedroom of their modest London flat.

Greek Pete is a docudrama that edits intimate scenes of real life together to form a narrative template but no effort is made to re-contextualise and commandeer events or images. Director-producer Andrew Haigh has made the absolute most out of a £5000 budget, a cast of actual London rent boys, and a crew of himself and one other.

It really is a nice change to see a shoestring gay film that doesn’t try to jazz things up with crazy camera angles and all kinds of vain experiments with form, story and style. It’s really commendable too that someone has finally given gay film festival audiences, who normally enjoy ridiculously over-dramatised, Orientalist tales of urban gay living, a bit of a snow job. Titillating promises of explicit actual sex and copius nudity will draw big gay film festival crowds to this film, and they’ll then watch the depressing antics of a bunch of rootless young gays living a very drab dream.

Having said that, it’s a little hard to know quite what to make of Greek Pete in and of itself since even though the film itself is quite sound, it’s a character driven piece and this character is driving blindfolded.

Dumb as a post and interested only in saving up enough money to buy what he keeps referring to as “fings”, Pete is a most unengaging and unsympathetic guy and carrying anything other than the cotton straps of a Lonsdale singlet over his shoulders is way more than what he’s cut out to handle. He’s also as cold as ice and unwilling or unable to make any kind of connection with any other person.

Pete, whose grand ambition is to be nominated in the International Escort Awards, galumphs through his days and nights thinking he’s way more attractive than he actually is and under the terrifying delusion that his line of work is eventually going to get him somewhere.

His drooling clients hang on his every shitwitted gesture and comment since that’s his stock in trade - mockney slut whose balls are many times larger and far more complicated than his brain. His friends are all rent boys too and they fill their spare time doing bumps of K, G and so on and moaning about their last lousy client.

The film reaches a pre-climax when Pete travels to the United States and wins his Escort of the Year award and jumps up to the podium (in a loose sports singlet) and tries to deliver some sort of ham fisted thank you speech but can’t be heard because the audience members are all screaming out “take your pants off” and “fuck me” etc. It’s a genuinely sad moment.

British film makers like Michael Winterbottom, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach have worked near this milieu for most of their careers and they’ve found tragedy, wit and beauty here. Haigh has captured a glimpse of some of this. His gentle underscoring of key scenes with subtle synth music and decision to give Pete enough rope and film the results pays some dividends.

It’s very clear that Pete has leapt at the chance to advertise his services by appearing in the movie. Well done to Andrew Haigh for standing back, holding fire and letting Pete show us much more about himself than he probably realised.