"Alps," From Yorgos Lanthimos - NYTimes.com A lot of the recent news from Greece has been sad and disturbing. The same could be said about some recent Greek films, though the words might have a slightly different meaning. This too is apt, since one theme of the movies in question - I'm thinking of "Dogtooth" and "Attenberg" as well as Yorgos Lanthimos's "Alps," the subject of this review - is the absurd and alarming divergence of language from its objects. Thus the grown-up, nightmarishly home-schooled children in "Dogtooth," also directed by Mr. Lanthimos, have been taught a perverse vocabulary: they think a sea is a kind of chair and a zombie a type of flower. The young woman at the center of "Attenberg," the most recent film by Athina Rachel Tsangari, studies human behavior with the sober curiosity of a visitor from another planet. Mr. Lanthimos appeared in that film, and Ms. Tsangari was a producer of both "Dogtooth" and "Alps." The title of "Alps" refers to the name given by its leader to a tiny organization whose four members impersonate dead people for the obscure benefit of the recently bereaved. The leader of the group (Aris Servetalis), a mustachioed ambulance attendant who goes by the alias Mont Blanc, explains that he has chosen "Alps" because the word has no obvious connection to the work he and the others do, and also because it has a symbolic meaning. The Alps, in his view, are at once uniquely themselves and able to stand for any other mountains. Thus the woman known as Monte Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia) is able to impersonate a teenage tennis player and a diabetic who speaks English with her lover. The other two Alps are a young gymnast (Ariane Labed) and her coach (Johnny Vekris), whose vaguely sadomasochistic, apparently nonsexual relationship may have an oblique connection to the rest of the group's work. Oblique connections are the threads that hold this film together, as Mr. Lanthimos moves from one somber, deliberate scene to the next. His wide-screen, shallow-focus compositions have a dreamy, almost hallucinatory quality that underlines the strangeness of the story. Like "Dogtooth," "Alps" works by systematically unsettling our sense of what is normal and habitual in human interactions. Would grieving parents or spouses really be comforted by the performances of the Alps, whose services they seek out and pay for? It is both an obvious question and one the film waves away. To appreciate what Mr. Lanthimos is doing - to accept his invitation to rethink some very basic assumptions about identity and feeling - you need to accept his peculiar and suggestive premise. And part of the experience of watching "Alps" - some of the work and a share of the pleasure - consists of figuring out the terms of that premise. There is a lot of ambiguity about the boundaries between the real and what might be called the Alpine dimensions of interpersonal contact. Is the old man Monte Rosa visits on occasion her father, or is she playing a role with him? Are her increasingly frequent sexual encounters with "clients" part of the Alps" service, or evidence that she is starting to fall apart? Mr. Lanthimos regards these questions as interesting puzzles, while Ms. Papoulia (an intense, quietly magnetic actress who also appeared in "Dogtooth") brings an emotional ferocity that prevents the film from turning into an arch intellectual game. It is that, but when Monte Rosa is on screen, "Alps" can be chilling rather than merely cold. Alps Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos; written by Mr. Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou; director of photography, Christos Voudouris; edited by Yorgos Mavropsaridis; production design by Anna Georgiadou; costumes by Thanos Papastergiou and Vassilia Rozana; produced by Athina Rachel Tsangari and Mr. Lanthimos; released by Kino Lorber Inc. In Greek and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. WITH: Aggeliki Papoulia (Nurse), Aris Servetalis (Paramedic), Johnny Vekris (Coach), Ariane Labed (Gymnast), Stavros Psillakis (Nurse's Father), Efthimis Filippou (Lighting Shop Owner) and Eftihia Stefanidou (Blind Lady).