Need your heartstrings tugged today? We recommend this clip from Giorgos Lanthimos’ new film Alps posted by Indiewire. From the director of Dogtooth, and also reuniting him with Dogtooth actress Aggeliki Papoulia, Alps is about a group of people who act as substitutes for lost loved ones; creating as close a facsimile as possible to aid in the grieving process. Alps will be playing at TIFF, which begins later this week, and has already generated quite a bit of buzz. In this clip, we see a nurse providing some unorthodox treatment to a terminally ill woman.
Usually film clips you see online are so fragmented, so incomplete, that they don’t provide much insight into the film itself or do much to increase your desire to see it. This clip from Alps is something altogether different. This one little moment of the film provides so much emotional weight and such a clear establishment of the connection between the characters there contained, that it almost feels like a short film more than a mere clip. It’s obvious that woman lying in the hospital bed at one point in her life played tennis, and that this caring nurse wanted to find a way to allow the patient to reconnect with her life before the illness. It’s a beautifully bittersweet moment; humorous and hopeful. The effectiveness of this clip is a testament to the skillful direction of Lanthimos.
The report from Indiewire goes on to suggest that since Alps is so unlike anything you’ve seen before, it is best to go into it as blind as possible. I am in total agreement with this philosophy on pretty much every film I see so I appreciate that nothing feels spoiled by this particular clip. It perfectly navigates the line between being too vague and too revealing. It gives us just enough information to understand the inner workings of the characters and the emotional complexities of the story as to entice our interest. I have a feeling Alps will earn a great deal of critical attention for Lanthimos just as did Dogtooth.
