The Birthday Party immediately commands our attention with its moody and even haunting cinematography. It’s the dead of night, and a luxurious, if not decadent, island villa is besieged by a storm. The opening scene’s genuine, moody, or haunting presence is not due to the darkness, thunder, and lightning, but rather the heartbreaking sound of a recording of Maria Callas singing “O mio babbino caro” from Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Gianni Schicchi.
It’s a strange choice given that the aria is from a comic opera in which all ends well for the two lovers. On the other hand, Callas is singing about the fear of being separated from someone she loves. As it happens, in The Birthday Party’s opening scene, Marcos Timoleon (Willem Dafoe) learns that his son has died in a plane crash.
He stands on the pier in the rain and tells his trusted aide that he wants to be left alone. Director Miguel Ángel Jiménez squeezes the heightened drama out of the moment and attempts to create a scene that would be fitting for the operatic stage. Thrusting Marcos into tragedy, Jiménez sets the tone for The Birthday Party‘s journey into the dark corners of human nature.
Adapted from Panos Karnezis’ 2007 novel of the same name, and co-written by Giorgos Karnavas and Nicos Panayotopoulos, the story is set in 1975, when Marcos celebrates his daughter Sofia’s (Vic Carmen Sonne) 25th birthday with a lavish party on his private Mediterranean island. Something to bear in mind is that, if the inference is correct that Marcos resembles the Greek and Argentine shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who dated Maria Callas, then there are additional layers of meaning in The Birthday Party’s opening scene. It wouldn’t be surprising if this were the case, because the film is interested in the world of privilege.
Jiménez, however, isn’t interested in judging his cast of characters. Instead, he and his co-writers are content to sit back and watch Marcos’ guests circle the self-proclaimed pirate with their personal agendas.
Jiménez has described The Birthday Party as being about “power, legacy, love mistaken for possession, and the quiet violence within privilege.” The milieu of characters offers the writer and director ample opportunity to explore these themes. These are structured in a series of chapter-like interactions, with recurring characters, such as Marcos’ English biographer Ian Forster (Joe Cole), who has become intimately involved with Sofia, which upsets Marcos’ legacy plans.
Jiménez, however, is not idly sitting back. Instead, he encourages his audience to people-watch and dissect the themes and ideas layered within this social setting. Then, he’ll pick an opportune moment to reassert authorial control and make a point that steers his audience’s point of view.
A playful storyteller, Jiménez teases the possible directions he can take The Birthday Party‘s story, including a stronger political throughline. In one scene, the front page of The New York Times reads: “Hope For Peace In Western Sahara: Kissinger Warns Spain Over Threat to Alliance”. In another scene, Marcos talks with a longtime friend and associate, who gripes about the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policies that affect their continued control of resources in Western Sahara, annexed by Morroco in the mid-1970s.
There is a broader story to be told here, but like roaming around the villa in The Birthday Party‘s opening scenes, there are rooms we are never allowed to see, just as there are aspects of Marcos’ life that are out of bounds. Jiménez allows us to overhear things so that we may connect certain dots, such as the characters’ relationship with Franco. Jiménez, however, is focused on Marcos and Sofia’s personal story, which revolves around power, control, legacy, and misguided love. This may risk alienating some audiences for whom the subject of a dysfunctional family will feel tired and worn.
The tropes of Sofia and Ian’s forbidden love, the tensions between Marcos and his ex-wife, and Marcos, the domineering father consumed with legacy, are all familiar. If Jiménez is reaching into a well-worn bag of tricks, he uses them to effectively emphasise and explore specific themes and ideas.
Ian and Marcos’ conversations are some of The Birthday Party‘s strongest scenes. From discussing Julius Caesar and Octavian, and the idea of dictatorship versus a republic, to their inevitable frank conversation about Sofia, there are fascinating ideas to pluck from their interactions. The most striking aspect is Ian’s intellectual prowess in dueling with Marcos, but once the contest shifts to their willpower, it is the capacity for violence that sets the two men apart. This introduces the important theme of the illusion of strength, power, and control.
Marcos is a Caesar on his private Mediterranean island, and even Sofia must reckon with her own self-grandiosing illusions. She is expected to fit into her father’s plans for his legacy, giving up whatever future she has imagined. If The Birthday Party is about the tussle between generations, then it’s a futile one.
As the story unfolds, the dark corners Marcos leads his audience into are exposed, and it’s here that Jiménez picks one of those opportune moments to ask, regardless of whether we act on our thoughts, will we ever be forgiven for having them? It’s a powerful moment because Marcos is showing us the extremes of his personality, and the ramifications are thematically elevated.
Veteran actor Willem Dafoe exerts his indomitable presence, and with those sunglasses calls to mind his more recent turn as novelist Walker Reade (a.k.a Hunter S. Thompson) in Patricia Arquette’s 2025 directorial feature début, Gonzo Girl. Digesting the character of Marcos is an interesting experience because of Dafoe’s star power.
In this regard, Dafoe contrasts with Sonne, who, as an actress, finds a way to hide herself in plain sight. She has a genuine transformative ability that creates a separation between the tormented characters of Sascha in Isabella Eklöf’s Holiday (2018), Karoline in Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle (2024), and now the damned heiress Sofia Timoleon.
The Birthday Party is layered with details that address surveillance and voyeurism, the struggle for parents and their children to understand one another, and how human frailty is hidden by illusions of power and control, influence, and wealth. Jiménez and his co-writers have created a beautiful-looking film that deals with the ugly side of human beings, and by the end of the story, the audience is likely to understand what Marissa, the maid, told Sofia about her father’s island: “The first few days it’s like a paradise. Any longer than that, it feels like a cage.”