Alps

As predictably intolerable as one might’ve anticipated, Alps follows several characters as they help grieving folks get over their loss by standing in for the deceased. It’s a decent premise that’s employed to disastrously uninvolving effect by filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, as the director delivers a meandering narrative that contains exceedingly little in the way of character development or context – with the movie instead built around a series of interminable, nonsensical conversations and encounters (eg two figures engage in a punishingly tedious chat about mountain ranges). The hands-off atmosphere is compounded by a breathtakingly deliberate pace and overall paucity of even partially engaging elements, and it’s certainly not surprising to note that Lanthimos doesn’t even make it clear what Alps is about until around the midway point. (Lanthimos just wastes so much time.) There’s little doubt that the picture’s aimlessness and lack of any kind of arc paves the way for an absolutely interminable second half, which ultimately confirms Alps’ place as yet another abject failure from a truly incompetent and reprehensible filmmaker.

no stars out of ****