“Alps” at UWM Union Theatre

There are many ways people grieve after losing a loved one, and Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps presents an entirely new and completely absurd approach to coping with death. The solution: a process of deliberate denial.

Alps is screening this weekend at the UWM Union Theatre, where it is sure to leave some confused and frustrated and others enticed by the many pleasures of interpretation the film has to offer. Lanthimos has no interest in easy answers, or really any form of narrative clarity. Rather, his film unfolds like a mystery, only at a glacial pace and with the utmost interest in ambiguity. Alps leaves all of its doors wide open, which allows for a sort of free rein of interpretation. There is no right answer.

Alps is Lanthimos’s follow-up to his breakthrough film, Dogtooth, which earned him an Oscar nomination and the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. After all of Dogtooth’s success, expectations were high for Lanthimos’s next film. While Alps revisits many of the same themes and employs a similar visual style, it fails to deliver the same punch-in-the-gut as Dogtooth.

The film’s title refers to a group of questionably motivated people whose purported mission is to help grieving families deal with their loss through a process they call “substitution.” They call themselves “ALPs.”

Their substitutions are superficial attempts at recreating the presence of a dead loved one by wearing their clothing, mimicking their mannerisms, and parroting lines from an unknown script. Somehow, these ultra-phony recreations are meant to ease the pain of not having the real thing around.

Things start to get hairy (and interesting, finally) when one member, Mont Rosa (played by Dogtooth’s Aris Servetalis), takes on a substitution without informing the leader of the group – an apparent violation of “ALPs” code. From here, the film hastens its pace en route to its harrowingly bleak resolution.

The film is emotionally removed in every aspect, and if nothing else should be praised for its hermetically sealed unity of elements. From the dispassionate dialogue to the muted colors, the film’s style is drab and dull all over. This look and feel works well to mirror the bleak lifestyles of the characters.

The most important thing to note about Alps for the prospective attendee is that it is an “art film,” and could be placed alongside of idle malaise of Michelangelo Antonioni, the surreal absurdity of Luis Buñuel, or the handheld intimacy of Lars von Trier. With no suspense, drama, or even an honest emotion to be had, the film is an entirely cerebral experience, likely to be appreciated only by those with an interest in unconventional cinema. Its appeal lies in its ability to make you think and question what you are seeing, but don’t expect any appeals to your more base emotions.