Alps

A KVIFF screening, from the young and talented Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos, a follow-up of DOGTOOTH (2009), which was a dark horse nominee of Oscar

I love Lanthimos' sobriety, and I love it because his stories are unconventional and challenging, and Alps is no exception. However, and problematically, Alps is a story that needs a lot from you to be believable. We are talking about a group of people who rent themselves to people who have just lost their loved ones. They pose as these dead people as a way to bring them comfort. They replace them for a couple of hours, being led with dialogues provided by the surviving family members. Strange, right? Evidently, Lanthimos tries to disrupt. To conjure up an uncomfortable environment like the one he achieved in Dogtooth. However, he fails to create the same feeling. That's to be expected, of course, they're not supposed to be the same thing, but Alps is certainly a sister film to Dogtooth. Both films are about false situations built on the reality of their characters. In Dogtooth cloistered by the madness of their father, and in Alps locked in a reality in which they interpret a truly morbid spectacle, devoid of identities and adopting others. Alps isn't a bad movie, but it takes itself so seriously that it inevitably plays against its clear absurdity. And at some point Lanthimos doesn't seem to have a solid handling of his own story because it starts to get less and less interesting as the minutes go by, and the conclusion feels disoriented and abrupt. After The Favourite, this is the second film of his that disappoints me.