Alpeis
Director: Giorgos Lanthimos
Writer: Giorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Cast: Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane Labed
Part of: Viennale

Plot:
The Alps are a secret group of people who offer a special brand of grief councelling to people: they play the person who died for the family, after a lot of research, to try and help them with their acceptance. When the group takes on the case of a young girl who died, Monte Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia), a nurse by day, starts to go completely off the rails and breaking all their rules.

Alpeis was completely different from what I expected. If I had made a movie with that plot, it would be a total comedy. But you can’t really get any more serious than Lanthimos with this film. I would have liked my version of the movie much better.

I spent most of the time during this film being bored. It was sometimes interrupted by me rolling my eyes really hard (at the scenes where Lanthimos gets especially artsy) and I also fell asleep for a bit, but that’s basically it.

I didn’t understand why the group had to be secret in the first place. The therapeutic value of their methods might be dubious, but psychics, homeopaths and astrologists face the same problem and none of them are in a secret society to practice their “craft”. I’ve reached the conclusion that they had to keep it hush-hush because they’re all completely insane, but I have to admit that that’s not really a satisfying explanation.

I openly admit that I did not get the movie. It didn’t speak to me at all. And what was the fucking deal with the gymnast and her trainer? Not that I didn’t enjoy the gymnastics, I quite liked the choreographies. But what the hell?

Maybe I should just stay away from Greek movies in the future. The ones that make it to Austria never really seem to resonate with me.

Summarising: Yeah… no.