‘Alps’

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)

‘Dogtooth’

Perverse and challenging, this early film from director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster) is a highly original black comedy – or complete pretentious claptrap, dependent on your place on the pendulum.

A comfortably-off Greek family live in a rambling property on the edge of the city – parents and their three young adult children. Only the father (Christos Stergioglou – The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas, False Alarm) can leave the property. The others move around freely – the father even brings a female security guard from work to have sex with his son. But they never cross the threshold to the outside world and must occupy their time between themselves.

Intense, bizarre, outrageous, childish, ridiculous, disturbing – just how far will a father go to protect his family. A long way, according to Dogtooth – and it’s not a very pleasant experience.

Nominated for the 2011 best foreign language film Oscar.

Rating: 37%