A group of people start a business where they impersonate the recently deceased in order to help their clients through the grieving process.
Director:
Yorgos Lanthimos
From metacritic.com
Related lists from IMDb users
Title: Alps (2011)
Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Angeliki Papoulia | ... | Nurse | |
| Aris Servetalis | ... | Stretcher-bearer | |
| Johnny Vekris | ... | Coach | |
| Ariane Labed | ... | Gymnast | |
 |
Sofia Aivathiadou | ||
|
|
Efstathia Angeli | ||
|
|
Ilias Antzoulatos | ||
|
|
Giorgos Athanasopoulos | ||
|
|
Tasos Bahouros | ||
|
|
Dimitris Bosinakos | ||
|
|
Niki Diagoupi | ||
|
|
Giorgos Diamantis | ||
| Efthymis Filippou | ... | Lamp Shop Owner | |
|
|
Labros Filippou | ||
|
|
Dimitris Fryliggos | ||
A night nurse in a hospital provides special services to families who have recently lost their loved ones. She is a member of a group called the Alps, whose members offer, for a fee, to play recently deceased during visits of their grieving relatives.
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's BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR and I haven't watched yet. But Giorgos' eerie approach of scrutinizing modern-day's communicative malaise has its overt justification in ALPS.
Absurd, genuinely designed, full of fits of laughters about the mimicking set pieces, the film presents itself in a more comprehensive elaboration than I expected, although initially, it takes some time to figure out the real occupation and motivation behind the self-dubbed "Alps"group (maybe Everest could be a more befitting name since its the highest mountain on the earth and its irreplaceability should be more cogent than Alps as long as height is concerned).
But the wacky "impersonating the deceased"groundwork is not potent enough to sustain the film into a genius employment, since the demanding of this type of service and its viability to perform its presumed obligation (to console the next-of-kins' grief) is a moot question here, and eventually a win-win condition has to yield to the conceptual willfulness (in the film it is the identity misconception, a spontaneously unsurprising aftermath). But performance-wise, leading actress Aggeliki Papoulia is a natural treasure, rendering the eccentric antics much more personal dedication (which also includes an equivocal default of the relationship between her and her father, another Alps' case or not?), I put her among my top 10 list of BEST LEADING ACTRESS line-up of 2011.
ALPS is a patchwork piece, nonetheless, Giorgos' one-of-a-kind singularity alone could be singled out as one of the most intriguing and cutting-edge film artist to bring some mondo gratification to cinema nerds.