I wrote here about my expectations about Alps (2011), the new film by the writing team Lanthimos/Filippou, the first also the director. That was the set for their prior brilliant Dogtooth (2010). Am I disappointed. The dispassionate, blocking, stern framing of the characters, mostly filmed backwards, that worked so well in his previous film, take a bigger weight and that annoyed me at some point. The inverted amorcée (the objects, rather than the character, were out of focus) isolated the characters from their world (their real world, from which they're constantly trying to break off) but it eventually detached me from what that world. There are some very good scenes, were the balance between the tragic comedy and the sexual and social bizarre create an intended disturbing metaphor for a human need of becoming something otherworldly. But you don't understand what's going on until 40 minutes into the film and overall the sequences seemed pasted only, I didn't get the meaning of too many of them, I was bored most of the time and couldn't connect to neither actions nor characters to get enveloped. I'd say, aesthetically coherent (I may have not liked but that doesn't stop it from having the potential to be considered a great work for many of you) but the writing was too all over the place for me.
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