Alps * * * ½
Judging from his last two features, director Yorgos Lanthimos specializes in films centered around social experiments. In his last film Dogtooth, he used the story of homeschoolers brainwashed and shut in by their parents to examine the effects of a leading power (ranging from governmental to parental) using misinformation and lies to instill obedience in others and maintain authority. It was a depraved, even disgusting film (an alleged dark comedy whose humor escaped me), but shouldn't any authority's abuse of power be met with disgust? Lanthimos knows how to make his point.
His latest film, Alps, seems more assured, firm-footed, like he has found his niche. It's deadpan humor is inescapable (as when the gymnast's instructor tells her with stern solemnity that she isn't ready for pop music in her routines), but Lanthimos still knows how to make his point. The plot revolves around four individuals: a gymnast, her coach, a nurse, and an ambulance paramedic -who refer to themselves as Alps (like the mountain range). Their leader, the ambulance paramedic, explains that they are called Alps because those mountains are irreplaceable as the grandest of them all, but one wouldn't mind their replacing another mountain range, after all... they're the Alps. The group too is irreplaceable in the services they provide, for their service is that of replacement. They stand in as substitutes for deceased loved-ones until their clients feel ready to move on.
It's an interesting concept that one would suspend one's disbelief in order to escape from dealing with the reality of death. Alps' stand-ins' monotonous, dry, and lifeless performances border on humourous, but even still, their clients ask them back. Have we as a human race become too scared to feel? And are our relationships simply re-chargers for our happiness, rather than real human connections? Could someone just replace our "happiness-chargers"? As long as we kept feeling good, would it matter? Interesting questions to ponder as to who we are to one another. Alps questions ever further though, wondering who we are to ourselves, asking what we truly root our identities in.
Neither of the two women in the group seems secure in who they are (and it's telling that none of the characters' actual names are ever revealed), they are dominated by men who dictate their identities. The gymnast's only satisfaction is in her instructor's satisfaction with her. When she makes a mistake, whether in gymnastics or in her position as a part of Alps, she desperately wants his forgiveness -to the extreme that at one point she demeans herself by stripping topless and heaping praises on him in hopes that he will return them. She seems to have a symbiotic existence, she needs his approval to live.
The other woman (the nurse) appears to have no true sense of self at all. She lives with her father and lives to serve his needs. She lives to serve the needs of those at the hospital. And she lives to serve the needs of her Alps clients. What are her needs though? The film The Hurt Locker opened with the quote, "war is a drug" and the film went on to embody that statement throughout. For the nurse, substituting herself for others is her drug, to the point that she secretly takes on other clients outside of Alps. She spends more time with them than she should, and she is without boundaries: sexually, morally, or emotionally. Upon Alps' discovery of her independent work, she is violently banned and stripped of her clientele. Her steps to find new identity show that desperation is all that's left to define her.
Who are we to one another? Do we even know ourselves concretely? And in 2012, are women still defined by a history of forced servitude and maleability to the needs of men?
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