Alps
Directed By: Giorgos
Lanthimos
Written By: Giorgos
Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
Starring: Aggeliki
Papoulia, Ariane Labed, Aris Servetalis, and Johnny Vekris.
Director of Photography: Christos Voudouris, Editor: Yorgos
Mavropsaridis, Production Designer: Anna Georgiadou
Alps screened at part
of Film Society’s Film Comment Selects program. Kino Lorber will release the film
theatrically later this year.
Alps includes one of the least
believable fight between a couple I’ve ever seen on film. The man and woman
give little emotion to their prescribed, inanely written lines. When she knocks
over a lamp, it feels like a direction instead of a moment of true emotion. And
when she apologies and they embrace, my initial reaction was to laugh instead
of cry. But this is also how Giorgos Lanthimos, the director of the film, wants
us to feel. These are the worst actors ever, so why do they do it?
Lanthimos
made a splash in certain circles two years ago with his formalist tale of
allegorical power, Dogtooth, a film
that I found often went for shocks than more complicated truths. Alps, which has a less bizarre premise
than Dogtooth, is also a bit more restrained
in its shocks. But by avoiding less graphic material, Lanthimos instead finds
more profound material as well. Alps
not only challenges our current push toward more apparent virtual living, but
examines how it works just like an addiction.
I
hate to spoil some of the fun of discovering what exactly is going on in Alps, but to discuss the film properly,
I must at least give away the main premise, which is slowly revealed over the
first thirty minutes of the film. So, reader beware, spoilers ahead! Lanthimos
focuses on a group who call themselves the Alps. Their job is simple—when
people die before family or friends think it is time, they take the place of
them for a few hours a day. They wear their clothes, learn their likes and
dislikes, and do their best to act like them, repeating their catch phrases or reenacting
moments from their past. Our main character, a nurse (the characters only refer
to each other by names of mountains), sets her eyes on a dying tennis teenager
that has come into the hospital.
How
these families have such money to pay for this type of service, especially
given the current economic crisis in Greece, does remain a mystery, though one
that’s not of any particular concern. While films like Surrogate and Strange Days
have challenged the idea of virtual life through a science fiction premise, Alps challenges us to the same
philosophical premises—how we tend to live our lives outside of our own
emotions and actions—and through a dazzling formalist style. Lanthimos’s hand
appears in every shot, as he seems to pry into his characters’ heads, often
through oblique, cryptic angles that often make us focus on characters outside
the action of the scene. While the premise of Alps is certainly strange, the film is more loving of its
characters than Dogtooth, and while
some of the situations produce a bit of comedy (mainly at the group’s attempts
to “act,” which come of rigid and awkward), Lanthimos treats his characters
with respect in which we become more invested in, and thus find stronger
meaning.
By
digging deeper, he finds instead a portrait of addiction more than anything
else. The nurse (played pitch perfectly by Aggeliki Papoulia) decides to go
behind the man running Alps in order to take more and more jobs. From their, Alps changes to a portrait of addiction
more than anything else, except the thing our protagonist addicted to is trying
to be something she’s not. Because Papoulia commits so thoroughly to the role,
I found myself fascinated as she went into a downward spiral of danger, doing
everything possible to be anything but her actual self (which is kind of an excellent
way to describe addiction, no?).
Not
everything works perfectly in Alps,
mainly due to Lanthimos’s desire to pack more and more absurdity without
considering meaning. The young Ariane Labed is quite astonishing as a member of
the group whose desire to is to dance to pop music as she practices her
twirling instead of classic. However, trying to derive how this somewhat comic
subplot fits into the rest of the film (especially given that it bookends the
plot) seems too cryptic to fit in, chosen to add to the plot because aberrant
behavior is all Lanthimos enjoys watching.
But
when Alps hits its stride, as we
watch the poor nurse descend further from her real self and more toward the
lives she rather inhabit, I found it easy to be swept up in the intensity of
Lanthimos’s direction. We all create different lives for ourselves; they just
do it in the literal sense.
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