A disconcerting early film from auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, the director at the forefront of the Greek Weird Wave and bold, bizarre, darkly uncanny films.
Alps – a secret society based at an Athens sports hall. Individuals hire themselves out to bereaved families to stand in for deceased relatives to help ease the pain of their loss. Headed by Mont Blanc (Aris Servetalis), the members find themselves in disturbing scenarios that challenge their sense of humanity and personal identity. Thirtysomething Angeliki Papoulia, a nurse and living at home with her widowed father, must enact both a teenage tennis player and a middle-aged wife to a lighting store owner speaking in fractured English. Gymnast Ariane Labed, struggling with her coach, finds it difficult to memorise her scripts.
Bizarre and dour with its darkly serious undercurrents, Alps is a highly original black comedy. But conceptually it’s challenging, provocative but relatively empty with little to say.
Rating: 40%
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster)
Writer: Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster), Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster)
Main cast: Angeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth, To thavma tis thalassic ton Sargasson), Aris Servetalis (The Waiter, L), Ariane Labed (Attenberg, Le Vourdalak)
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