ABSTRACT
In September 2012, Ben Ferris screened his film Penelopa, based on the Homeric myth of Odysseus' waiting wife, at the second Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche conference on Santorini. If readers of The Odyssey consider it as a text that instructs on values of "moral virtue", they soon distinguish between the classical model of male and female excellence. The pace and texture of Ferris's film reveal the weight of such womanhood. Shot in Brezovica castle outside of Zagreb, Croatia, the film's echoing, overgrown location is Penelope's landscape of abandonment. Both the Croatian landscape and the spare words exchanged in Serbo-Croatian give the slaughtered geese a dark relevance. In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope's closest maiden companions are found to be duplicitous and disloyal. In the penultimate scene in the dining room, Penelope embodies Artemis, avenging the maidens she is meant to protect by hunting and killing the beasts who threaten the balance and tranquility of her world.
