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The Alps (Aggeliki Papoulia, Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris, Ariane
Labed) is a quartet of amateur actors from various walks of life who help
those who have lost their loved ones over the times of mourning - by
paying visits to their homes pretending to be the respective deceased,
also by wearing the deceased's cloths and doing some of their dialogue
according to meticulously mapped out scripts. And even if our Alps are
rather wooden actors, it seems to help those in mourning. Then Monte
Rosa (Aggeliki Papoulia), a nurse in everyday life, finds a girl at her
hospital, a tennisplayer, who's sure to die, and whose parents she soon
convinces to ask for service of the Alps. However, Monte Rosa wants to
assume the role of the tennis player herself, even though a younger
colleague of hers, a dancer (Ariane Labed) is much more suited for it. So
in front of er group, she pretends the tennisplayer has not died, when she
indeed has, and does this assignement on her own. Monte Rosa identifies
herself with work for the Alps more and more, especially since her real
life becomes more and more miserable, and thus she eventually has sex with
one of her Alps-clients, pretending to be his deceased wife. However, her
favourite assignement is still the one as the tennisplayer, and eventually
she even seduces the tennisplayer's young boyfriend. This doesn't go
unnoticed, and eventually, the group leader of the Alps, Mont Blanc (Aris
Servetalis) has her fired from the group, and when she returns to the
tennisplayer's parents, she finds out her dancer-colleague has usurped her
role here. This totally throws her off-track, and in a desperate attempt
she tries to seduce her own father, pretending to be his long deceased
wife, and after he throws her out upon this, she breaks into the
tennisplayer's parents' home, just to sleep in her bed. But she has set
the alarm off and is thrown out by the tennisplayer's parents, her life
now in shambles, and her mind as well ... Despite its very dark
and sad subject matter, Alpeis is a surprisingly light-footed and
even comedic film that playfully points out the absurdities of its own
story and builds its humour on them, but without ever losing its empathy
for its characters, without going for cheap jokes or becoming moronic.
This is greatly helped by a very subtle directorial effort and a very
competent ensemble cast that clearly plays the film as a drama - which
doesn't hurt the film's entertainment value one bit ...
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