Four people meet in a gymnasium, a paramedic a gymnast, her
coach, and a nurse. They decide on a name for their group, ‘Alps’ and each is
given the name of one of the Swiss mountains, for example the groups autocratic
leader, the paramedic, takes Mont Blanc for his moniker. The reason for the
existence of this organisation is to provide a service for paying customers,
with members of the group acting the part of the recently deceased for
relatives and friends for a few hours per week in order to ease the bereaved
into letting go. For an hourly rate they impersonate a beloved daughter, lost
lover or in one case a cheating spouse of a blind woman.
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| The Gymnast. |
Devotees of Yorgos Lanthimos the Athens born filmmaker,
theatre director and writer will not find this wee synopsis strange at all.
Lanthimos was involved in 2009’s Dogtooth,
as director, and as co-producer and actor in 2010’s Attenberg
two wonderfully unique Greek movies that should not be missed. The director’s
latest movie Alps (2011) stars Aggeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth) as the nurse and the Greek born French actress Ariane
Labed (Attenberg) as the gymnast,
both superbly underlining Lanthimos’s depiction of Greek societies view and
treatment of women. It’s a film where it difficult to distinguish between
reality and the groups play-acting, is it really the nurses father or just
another job? It also includes unconventional references to American pop and
movie culture! But all three films mentioned have two thing’s in common: make
believe and how poeple yearn after relationships no matter how force and
meaningless.
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| The Nurse comforts the bereaved. |
In interviews Lanthimos has revealed that the film was made
on a restricted budget with limited technical means and lacked any form of
state support, conditions obviously not helped by the Greece’s financial
crisis. But what he has made is an unemotional, opaque film that’s strangely
watchable.
