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Alps (2011)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

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From Time Out London

In 1998, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda made a movie called ‘After Life’. Brilliantly simple, it follows a ragtag troupe of filmmakers who operate in a grim, earthbound purgatory. Their job is to extract favoured memories from the deceased and recreate them on celluloid. The film is screened as the subject – emotionally satisfied – gravitates to the great beyond.
With his probing, cod psychological third feature, ‘Alps’, the gifted Greek helmer Yorgos Lanthimos (‘Dogtooth’) addresses similar hefty themes: the way we attach meaning to trivial moments; the difficulties of accepting and defining mortality; and the strange lengths to which we have to go in order to fill the void of the departed.

His film is about a clandestine group who call themselves Alps, and their mission is to act as stand-ins for those who have lost loved ones. So, for the young tennis ace who gets badly injured in a car wreck, her dying days are spent in the company of one of the Alps so that her mannerisms can be learned by rote and kept alive for her parents to enjoy once more. If it sounds distasteful, it’s not.

Cynical maybe, but distasteful, no. The reality it takes place in is heightened just enough to make the concept feel ironic, but then all attempt at genuine sentiment subsequently falls flat. Lanthimos makes sure that we understand that the members of this unit are troubled and that their willingness to perpetuate this morbid theatre is an attempt to come to terms with their own qualms about death. One thing Lanthimos does well is his suggestion that the ways we enshrine people in our memories often boils down to pointless trivia. In researching their roles, the Alps only tend to ask about favourite foods or actors. It adds a dry comic edge to the dialogue, especially when we hear Jude Law mentioned as someone who encapsulated a young girl’s dreams.

But as committed as Lanthimos is to his loopy conceit, we’re also asked to accept that humankind at large would be open to the services the Alps provide, and it just doesn’t compute. Plus, the set-ups are never as awkward or funny as they could have been were the grievers not complicit in the Alps’ fun and games. There is a slither of a story, as we focus mainly on one of the Alps’ (Aggeliki Papoulia) attempts to go rogue, but motivations remain thin and her actions yield little in the sense of compelling drama. The violence meted out on her as punishment fails to shock, simply because it recalls an identical scene in ‘Dogtooth’.

Shot in pallid, pale hues and often employing the depth of the frame to its fullest, the most interesting moments are when Lanthimos leaves the meaning of a scene open to interpretation, such as the mysterious gymnastic ribbon-twirling that bookends the film. ‘Alps’ might have worked as science fiction or broad satire, but unlike Kore-eda, Lanthimos’s sincerity feels totally astray in the real world.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London London Film Festival 2011

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User reviews of this film

Fiercehairdo said...

Posted on Oct 18 2011 20:32 Quite disappointed in this 3 star review, Alps is actually much better than Mr Jenkins suggests. Lanthimos pulls off the conjuring trick of making Alps simultaneously moving and tender, whilst also being hilariously, darkly comic, yet also oddly unnerving. The film is beautifully shot with odd framing and depth of field used to emphasise the characters skewed and blurred view on reality. The film proceeds at a slow, deliberate pace but is still mesmerising throughout. Very little explanation is supplied leaving plenty of space for interpretation and speculation about the ambiguous events on screen. A really beautiful piece of work.

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