I have to admit that while I have seen several foreign films in my time, Rouleman is my first Greek cinematic endeavor. To say that I was left baffled about the movie would be a rather large understatement. It's such an odd piece of filmmaking that melds a fictional story and a mock-documentary together to tell a story that is neither relevant nor interesting. At many points during the movie I was either bored out of my skull or so completely indifferent to what was going on that I didn't care.

It's hard to tell what the aim of the picture really is in the end. There are a lot of artistic industrial and natural shots used during the course of the film and a whole lot of folks sitting around looking depressed. I mean it, I don't think I've seen a movie with this little dialogue in a very long time and most of the movies important scenes are simply characters sitting there staring at each other or into space. To make matters worse this is all put to a musical score that is the very definition of dismal. Rouleman feels more like a moody collect student's film than a serious attempt at making a movie.

The picture is also poorly assembled and the story is told in bits and pieces that inexplicably bounce between the past and present. The basic story here is that a filmmaker is doing a TV documentary on the disappearance of a young woman named Loula. During the course of the movie we see him and his crew interviewing various characters about how they knew her and when they last saw her. That may not sound all that bad but once you factor in that these portions are randomly sandwiched between the bits of Loula's story things get a little too jumbled for their own good. It breaks up the pacing of the film and really turns out to be more distracting than anything.

The bulk of Rouleman centers on the main story of Loula and her unfortunate choices that ultimately lead her to ruin. In a fit of poor judgment she hooks up with a creepy guy named Kosmas who happens to have a less than savory history. He promises her the world if they become engaged but once that happens, "the world" apparently turns into a round of drinks at the local dive. Needless to say Loula is more than a little miffed at the guy and decides to run away from him and her hometown. She finds her way to a city named Salonika and tries to get work as a singer at a local bar. From here things spiral downward and eventually the two storylines (Loula's and the documentary's) come crashing together.

I like mysteries as much as the next guy but I just couldn't take Rouleman's heavy handed symbolism and depressing tone. The movie feels amateurish at best especially when you consider how the film looks and was pieced together. The ending is also rather baffling and while what happens brings the two stories together it's done in a fashion that blatantly ignores reality for the sake of convenience. This is definitely a movie that's too mysterious for it's own good and will lose you in the process of telling it's less than interesting tale.

Rouleman is presented with a 1.33:1 full frame letterbox transfer and is arguably one of the worst looking films on DVD I have seen in a long time. For starters there is such a high amount of grain and pixilation in every scene that the movie appears to have been filmed from a sandbox. There is also an abundant amount of edge enhancement and don't even get me started on the faux widescreen presentation here.

The thing that really kills this movie though is the way that it was filmed. I don't know what kind of quality camera they used to make Rouleman but I thought for sure my eyes were going to start bleeding by the halfway mark. The camera is constantly in motion and never steady, which is fine really. But when you take into account the fact that it appears the movie was shot with such low-grade hardware that it looks like a poorly streamed webcam video, it's almost unbearable. When there is too much motion on screen the framerate drops incredulously and everything becomes choppy and more blurry than the image already is. I actually had to pause the movie and take some aspirin for the headache I got from watching it.

If my eyes were bleeding from the video, then my ears weren't all that far behind. The 2.0 stereo track here only provides original Greek with English subtitles and offers extremely little in terms of quality. There is next to no directionality with the audio and the volume is poorly balanced. Several times there will be absolutely no audio at all (even though characters are talking) and other times it will be blaring Greek wedding music out of nowhere. The subtitles don't pick up everything so unless you're fluent in Greek chance are you're going to feel like you're missing out on stuff (kind of like I was).

Once the main menu pops up you are treated with two options; "play" and "scene selection". Yes, there are no extras at all included anywhere on this disc. There aren't even any previews, which means Rouleman is absolutely as barebones as it possibly gets.

Rouleman is one of the more poorly assembled and filmed pictures I have seen a long time. The story isn't all that interesting and the characters are just plain dullsville. To make matters worse the artsy nature of the movie only detracts from the story it tries to tell. If the documentary segment were handled a little differently it may have helped the experience but as it stands that's not the case. Don't even get me started again on the video and audio quality of the disc. Unless you are a diehard Greek film fanatic this one is a definite skip. Skip It

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