"“It's all Greek to me...”"

For Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos, coming off the back of his Oscar nominated hit Dogtooth, there is now more pressure upon his follow-up feature Alps, and although bearing a unique, potentially enticing narrative, it fails to live up to the brilliance of his past project, in what is ultimately a quite disappointing return.

We delve into the deep, dark lives of a group of people who form a business whereby they impersonate the dead to help grieving relatives and loved ones overcome their grief, for a small price, of course. This somewhat unethical vocation is carried out by a nurse (Aggeliki Papoulia), a young gymnast (Ariane Labed), her coach (Johnny Vekris) and their ringleader, who calls himself ‘Mount Blanc’ (Aris Servetalis) – taking the name of one of the Alps, as he compares their line of work to the beautiful mountains – in that any mountain could replace one of the Alps, but would never quite be the same.

We follow the jaded nurse most intently, as she struggles to adapt to impersonating others, spending so much time pretending to be the recently deceased, that she loses her own identity (and mind) in the process. 

Alps has a really fascinating premise and one that comes with much potential, to be an almost surrealistic, yet dark tale – however, it’s almost too bleak and too unyielding, and although that isn’t often an issue (I gave five stars to Amour, remember) this feels contrived. It is undoubtedly affecting to look upon such an issue from a harrowing perspective: the repercussions such a business can have on its own employees, and their exploitation of mourning, vulnerable people – as rather than focus more on the actual business itself, we focus on those carrying it out.

By doing so, Lanthimos remains within the boundaries of an art-house, typically gloomy European production, avoiding going down a more cinematic path, which could so easily be done when taking on such a grand story. However, you can see the nods (albeit somewhat backhanded) to Hollywood, with consistent cultural references, as the colleagues like to find out about the departed’s favourite actors in order to gauge more about those they are impersonating – with names such as Brad Pitt and Robert Redford littered across the film. Mount Blanc’s mug also has the words “Los Angeles” written across it.

Despite an inclination to steer away from the job and focus more on the deteriorating mental state of the workers, the scenes when they are ‘at work’, and impersonating the dead in front of grieving relatives are extremely difficult to watch. So uncomfortable and disquieting, and no-one knows quite how to react to the situation.

On the whole Alps is rather odd, and is a difficult film to judge. It’s full of symbolic, metaphorical imagery, and although appreciating what Lanthimos is attempting, there is a lot that simply doesn’t piece together, nor make much sense, failing to pinpoint the relevance or connection in some of the scenes and themes explored. It’s all Greek to me.