Alps

Alps
Without a doubt, director Yorgos Lanthimos has a creative and fertile mind that generates films which provide evidence of his great imagination. For those who remember, he was responsible for the Oscar-nominated "Dogtooth" in 2009. He returns now with another personal project: "Alps," an honest, intriguing and passionate drama - spiked with funny moments - that examines "the process of mourning," in an unconventional way.

The film's characters are introduced one by one, and, after that, we learn about their motivations. We first meet a ballerina, practicing in front of her demanding trainer. She begs him to allow her to dance a pop song, and he doesn't allow her claiming that she is not ready. We then move to a young female tennis player that had an accident and is taken to the emergency room. Once in the hospital, the ambulance man tells a nurse that he just brought in an injured tennis player. It turns out that the gymnast, her trainer, the ambulance driver, and the nurse...

The quirkiness of language games
Three years ago, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos burned up the festival circuit with Dogtooth, a brilliant isolationist allegory about adult-age children who are kept on the family compound by parents who control (and wildly distort) information from the outside world.Alps is Lanthimos's disappointing follow up. Where the earlier film concerned young characters finally trying to break out of their proscribed roles, the new one is about a woman who desperately hangs on to false identities, because her real life gives her no satisfaction.In Dogtooth the eldest daughter finds a way of escaping.Here the same actress attempts to break into a home. Aggeliki Papoulia, who played the eldest sibling in Dogtooth, stars as a hospital nurse who moonlights as the member of the eponymous organization, which provides an unusual service: the recently bereaved can hire Papoulia or one of her three colleagues for a few hours a day to stand in as their deceased loved one, as a way of easing the...

Bizarre but Amazing
"Alps" is an incredible film, although it is challenging and unusual when compared to American films. It asks a lot of the viewer; the premise is high-concept, the events of the film unfold at a measured pace, and the film does NOT hold your hand while you watch it, you have to pick up on subtle clues pretty much the whole way through. If you are willing to accept those things, this film might be right up your alley. If you want a lot of action and classic dramatic performances, you should probably look elsewhere. However, "Alps" is dramatic and peppered with funny quirky moments that have caused it to stick with me since the first time I saw it. To powerful effect, director Lanthimos uses his high concept to examine loss, loneliness, performance, and the impossibility of replacing a lost loved one.

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