Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2010)

Evangelia Randou and Ariane Labed in Attenberg

Cast: Ariane Labed, Vangelis Mourikis, Evangelia Randou, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alexandros Niagros, Kostas Berikopoulos. Screenplay: Athina Rachel Tsangari. Cinematography: Thimios Bakatakis. Set decoration: Dafni Kalogianni. Film editing: Sandrine Cheyrol, Matthew Johnson.

I don't know much about the so-called "Greek New Wave" (which has also been called the "Weird Wave," from the uncanny quality of some of its films) beyond the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, who has broken out into international prominence. And now I've seen Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg, which isn't really much like Lanthimos's work, except that he has an on-screen role in it and was one of its producers. It's the story of Marina (Ariane Labed), a young woman who works in a steel mill and tends to her father, Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis), who is terminally ill. When she's not doing that, she's with her friend Bella (Evangelia Randou), talking about her alienation from other human beings and about sex -- the latter involving some experimentation with various forms of kissing. Oh, and occasionally doing some routines that look like John Cleese's old "silly walks" bit for Monty Python. Marina looks on human behavior with the kind of distanced curiosity with which she watches the TV nature documentaries by David Attenborough. (A mispronunciation of his name gives the film its otherwise inexplicable title.) Eventually she has sex with an engineer played by Lanthimos, and encourages Bella to have sex with the dying Spyros. He dies, Marina and Bella scatter his ashes, and the film closes by watching trucks hauling dirt from a mine. Yet somehow Attenberg is strangely watchable, enough to keep me pondering its oblique view of the characters and their world.

Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2011)

Aris Servetalis in Alps

Nurse: Angeliki Papoulia
Stretcher-bearer: Aris Servetalis
Coach: Johnny Vekris
Gymnast: Ariane Labed
Lamp Shop Owner: Efthymis Filippou
Teenager: Nikos Galgadis
Tennis Player: Maria Kyrozi
Tennis Player's Mother: Tina Papanikolaou
Tennis Player's Father: Sotiris Papastamatiou
Nurse's Father: Stavros Psyllakis
Nurse's Father's Girlfriend: Konstadina Papoulia
Blind Woman: Eftychia Stefanidou

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Efthymis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
Cinematography: Christos Voudouris
Set decoration: Anna Georgiadou
Film editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis

Like his Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Yorgos Lanthimo's Alps is a fable about hubris, a kind of screwball tragedy. The Alps are four people who have taken it upon themselves to relieve the suffering of those whose loved ones have recently died. This they do by acting as surrogates for the dead, reliving moments the bereaved once shared with their loved ones, which can range from conversations to care-giving (one of the bereaved is blind) to sex. The head Alp, who calls himself Mont Blanc, is an ambulance driver, and another Alp, who calls herself Monte Rosa, is a nurse, which puts them both in a good position to locate those in need of their services. The other two are a young gymnast and her hypercontrolling coach. We first meet them when the gymnast is performing a floor routine to the accompaniment of "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. She protests that she wants to perform to pop music, but he sternly insists that she's not ready for that yet. The gymnast, however, is deemed ready for her first turn as a surrogate, and the opportunity affords itself when the ambulance driver brings in a young accident victim, and the nurse takes over care of her as a patient, ingratiating herself with the young woman's parents. But the nurse has other plans: She wants to take over as the surrogate and pocket the money earned herself. So when the patient dies, she tells the other Alps that the woman has gone home to recuperate. What plot Alps contains centers on this subterfuge and its discovery. Other Alpine relationships form the rest of the story, which like most of the films directed by Lanthimos and co-written with Efthymis Filippou, becomes engagingly weirder as it goes along. Some critics have objected to the detached tone of the film -- Roger Ebert called it "a sterile exercise" -- and following it is sometimes like trying to work a puzzle in the dark -- Christos Voudouris's cinematography literally keeps some scenes in the shadows -- but Lanthimos is, as usual, a filmmaker like no other.