ΞΞ»ΟΞ΅ΞΉΟ (original title)
15 | 93min | Drama | Greece
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Efthymis Filippou (screenplay), Yorgos Lanthimos (screenplay)
Stars: Stavros Psyllakis, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris
This movie is so bizarre that I don't know where to start. OK, there is a group of people (this takes place in Greece) who start up a group where they "replace" people who have recently died for the bereaving relatives. For example, a teenage tennis prodigy is killed in a car accident and one of the five "Alps" (the name they have given themselves) ":replaces" the dead daughter by "dropping in" on her parents, having an apparently mundane conversation about her last tennis match, then leaving. This is such a strange situation: the mourning family members who have booked the service know that this is not their daughter, as does the Alp. Yet day-to-day scenes are played out as though the dead were alive by people who do not look or sound like the dead. It is terribly unsettling, and like Lanthimos's other films, just makes the hairs on the back of your neck bristle. It is bizarre.
The uncomfortable experience of watching is like watching a Pinter play. You know it;s weird. It's too weird. I preferred this movie to his earlier Dogtooth. I found it more chilling, more unsettling.
It occurred to me roughly half way through the film that maybe these Alps are providing a useful service: is it really any different from prostitution or acting or any other service? And it gets weirder still when an old blond woman who has lost her husband orders a service wherein she catches her dead husband, now "reincarnated" in the body of Mont Blanc (one of the Alps team) sleeping with another woman (another one of the Alps). She comes in an "catches" them in the act. She hits him abou the head, all the while chastising him: "How could you do this, you pig?".
Weird...