Tuesday 23 October 2018

ALPS **

The Greek director Yorgos Lathimos may possess the most perverse and idiosyncratic imagination in movies. After his Oscar-nominated breakthrough movie "Dogtooth" and prior to his international hit "The Lobster" he made "Alps", a completely off-the-wall 'comedy', (you might have trouble finding the jokes), about a group calling themselves 'The Alps', who stand in for the recently deceased in order to help the relatives through the grieving process. An American writer/director might have made this into a sci-fi/horror film along the lines of Frankenheimer's "Seconds" but Lathimos treats it like a fairy-
tale, albeit not one you might tell your children. This movie has a surreal sensibility that is both disquieting and blackly funny. On hindsight, "The Lobster" might seem like a natural progression though God knows where Lathimos might go from here.

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