Alps

Directed by: Giorgos Lanthimos
Written by: Giorgos Lanthimos & Efthymis Filippou
Full credits at IMDB

If Yorgos Lanthimos's previous feature, Dogtooth, examined the tyranny of the motion-picture director, then his follow-up, Alps, explores the lives of actors. The focus is off of instruction-givers: here, those who issue orders usually have their heads chopped out of the frame, or are out of focus, or have their backs to the camera; this is a movie about interchangeability, replaceability, the loss of self. It centers on a group that gets paid to fill in for the recently deceased, playing the dead to help the loved ones they left behind ease through their grief.

So, literally, they're actors, and the film addresses specifically the profession's unique condition: the weird exploitation, the objectification, the sexualization, the coddling—and the potential addiction to assuming another's life. But it's also more broadly about identity...

Keep reading my review at The L Magazine

Watch the trailer: