Much of the enjoyment of viewing the work of director-writer Yorgos Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou, for me at least, is in trying to figure out what's going on, so I'd recommend seeing them, "Alps" included, before reading reviews such as this one. The four movies of theirs that I've seen thus far (which also includes "Dogtooth" (2009), "The Lobster" (2015) and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" (2017)) all seem to exist in alternate realities and forgo much of the sort of exposition that makes most movies easily accessible. Moreover, the characteristic affectless acting from the duo's oeuvre dissuades the spectator from identifying with the characters, and the editing and compositions often obfuscate more than they elaborate on happenings. Distant shots remove more than they reveal and close-ups conceal rather than involve.
I suspect many are confused by searching for meaning in these movies, and that that's why so many strain to apply some social commentary to them. I think that's off-base, and if that were their raison d'être, I would've already abandoned them. Perhaps, they do reflect our society--our world in some ways, but I don't find that appealing; more so, I consider them self-reflexive of their own storytelling--of the art of cinema. This is especially the case with the filmmakers' two earlier Greek productions, this and "Dogtooth." In the prior one, the characters were confined by a fabricated narrative--metaphorically and literally held captive within a movie--with that world, rather paradoxically, upset and expanded by VHS tapes of movies. "Alps" is the inverse of this, with characters desperately and intentionally trying to shrink their world into fabricated narratives and using qualities of cinema (performance and storytelling) to do so, to metaphorically enter the movie. Here, the main characters are actors, who employ a stiff or deadpan style, to replace dead people in the lives of the deceased's family and friends, who themselves become both actors and spectators to the fabrications of their own lives, equated to cinema as they are. To do so, the actors largely rely upon questions involving favorite performers: movie stars and musical pop sensations, particularly.
The actors proclaim themselves the "Alps," because that mountain range can replace any other (as they do with the dead), they say, and the name doesn't specifically describe them (their identities outside of acting largely being a moot point, anyways). As actors, they inhabit different narratives within the overall arch that is the movie, with the stories becoming crisscrossed for everyone: characters and the spectator. Meanwhile, there are other forms of performance, as well: dance, including the gymnastics routines, sex and violence. The only deadly sin for the Alps is to fall out of character. Without their characters and their narratives--without the performance, they perish.
