Greek New Wave spearhead Yorgos Lanthimos'
"Alps" is at once a more ambitious and slighter work than his
previous film, the much-celebrated, bizarrely Oscar-nominated
"Dogtooth." Conceptually, it spirals to the levels of Charlie
Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” reaching for similar theatrical metaphors as
a way of prying into the modern ailment of dispassion and disconnection. Yet,
at the same time, though this isn’t a fun film to watch in the slightest,
Lanthimos has slackened his constricting tone from the film before. Thus, the
film doesn’t leave quite the visceral imprint, and moments feel wasted and,
shockingly enough, boring. Even so, it’s a strong, mind-bending movie, maybe a
bit too vague but probably all in the interest of leaving endless possibilities
wide open.
It’s clear throughout that no
other director could have made this film, from the head-scratching scenario to
weird and consistently offbeat comedy to the deliberately stilted direction to
the inevitable descent into sad sex, harsh violence, and despairing madness.
Lanthimos follows four people who, oddly enough, offer themselves to pretend to
be people who died so that those who lives were impacted by the deaths can
resolve their grief. This sounds like a ridiculous and emotionally destructive
idea, but, as you might expect, there is a market for it. The whole operation
is controlled mercilessly by an EMT who goes by the code name Mont Blanc (Aris
Servetalis), which is the biggest of the titular mountains (used as a group
name because it is considered essentially nonrelated to the practices of the
“substitutes”). The others include a gymnast (Ariane Lebed, incredible in
“Attenberg,” extremely disturbing here), her abusive and singleminded coach
Matterhorn (Johnny Vekris), and Monta Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia, looking a lot
older here than in “Dogtooth”), who works in the hospital with Mont Blanc (and
whose relationship with him is as strange as anything in this movie).
Monta Rosa is the audience’s
cipher into this world, though not the single POV, and not a very clear cipher
either. She lives a relatively mild existence, rooming with her father (Stavros
Psyllakis) and seeming to get a sort of pleasure out of some of the jobs that
she takes on (as an angry wife, as an adulterous friend, and, most prominently
and dangerously off-the-clock, as a teenage tennis player). But it’s all
speculation, as it could be that she’s a transitory figure, substituting for
her father (?) and not living anywhere in particular. What comes towards the
end fits under this interpretation, though the eventual explosion could be just
the typical sort of Lanthimos aberration.
Little is known about the other
members of ALPS, and how long the group had been around before being christened
that. We do know that the gymnast is suicidal, fragile, and wants more than
anything else in the world to perform to pop music, and that Matterhorn the
coach feels some sort of lingering affection for his dead barber. The rest is a
mystery, and all we know about certain characters in the film is who their
favorite actor is, a trait that reflects Lanthimos’ obsession with acting and
popular culture. Outside of the narrative growth, “Alps” doesn’t represent much
of a push for Lanthimos, more of a refinement of what he did before. For
example, the ending is excellent here whereas in “Dogtooth” it came as too much
of a sudden shock. There seems to be more here than in that film too, and
multiple viewings could help mine all of the possible implications. And even if
it’s familiar for Lanthimos, that doesn’t mean it isn’t original and interesting
overall. I’d like to see more of a spin on or rethinking of his style next time
out, but this will certainly do for now. B+
