Alps
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
2012
***
While Yorgos Lanthimos's brilliant and successful 2009 film Dogtooth was just as eerie and as absurd, I found Alps a little close to going just that little bit too far. It didn't have the same humour that I enjoyed in Dogtooth, in fact I found it to be unnecessarily intense when I'm not sure it should have been. It is brilliantly performed though by a group of great actors and the composition from Lanthimos is sublime. I enjoyed it but not half as much as I thought I would, it bothers me in all the right ways but it doesn't quite feel complete. Maybe it is intentional, credit due to any film that makes the viewer wonder about its secrets weeks after first viewing it. My problem is that I just couldn't help but compare it with Lars Von Trier's The Idiots, which is a far superior film. I love the concept and the execution it just needed refining and its own splash of something different. I think I'm being quite critical of Yorgos Lanthimos because I believe there is something more there, indeed I think his masterpiece will emerge within the next few films he makes.