TIFF: ALPS, Edwin Boyd

Amir reporting again from The Toronto International Film Festival where I saw something I frankly can't recall ever seeing on the big screen before: Toronto history.

EDWIN BOYD
I’d watched Edwin Boyd only a couple of hours after Rampart (covered yesterday), but the review had to wait.  Scott Speedman plays the titular character, a serial bank robber in the post-war Canada of the 50s. Boyd, if you haven’t heard of him, is something like a Canadian John Dillinger figure. But I assure you this film is miles better than Public Enemies.

I’d heard the film was a total crowd-pleaser and the reports were true. It’s a clichéd film that uses all the tricks of the gangster genre – bursts of action sequences, romantic subplots, pretty girls, crazy sidekicks – but it doesn’t misuse them. Sure, you’ve seen this stuff before, and yes, the film feels too self-aware of its cinematic qualities as many genre films do, but the two hours go by like two minutes as Speedman charmingly reincarnates Boyd. This version of Boyd’s life is extensively romanticized and many details of his life have been completely eliminated, but from a purely cinematic standpoint, Edwin Boyd was a pleasure.

ALPS
The most significant film of the past two days was my personal most anticipated of the festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ ALPS (If you’ve ever stumbled upon my blog, chances are you already know the extent of my affection for his last film, Dogtooth.) The good news is that ALPS totally lived up to my expectations. Though it’s hard to imagine Lanthimos finding new fans with this film - I’ve even encountered a few Dogtooth fans who were left cold by it - this signature work moved me in ways I did not expect and it stands high above the lot as the festival’s best offering so far.

ALPS is about a group of four people who get paid to substitute for the recently deceased to comfort their families. No information is given to us about the personal lives of three of them, but for the fact that one is the gymnastics coach of another. The fourth person, Monte Rosa (played by the brilliant Aggeliki Papoulia) is a nurse who’s also taking care of her aging father at home.

Peppered with absurd comic situations and brutal violence similar to what we saw in Dogooth, and boasting even bolder stylistic choices, ALPS reaffirms Lanthimos as a distinctive voice in today’s cinema and a visionary storyteller. He’s maintained his confident directorial control, only this time he adds a more poignant and heartfelt dimension to the film. And partnering with a new cinematographer here, he plays beautiful games with camera focus that he admitted (during the Q&A) weren’t always thought of in advance, but feel so right on the screen.

The real strength of the film however, lies in its script. If Dogtooth raised essential questions about the nature of identity, ALPS asks us to reconsider our perceptions of the identity of those around us. It will leave you thinking about the authenticity of your relationships and wondering how strong the bases of our interactions really are. How difficult is it to really replace someone? On what basis are relationships formed anyway? Do we maintain them by habit or will anybody do, if they wear the right clothes and repeat the same sentences? And so on. These questions are masked by Lanthimos’ surreal approach to storytelling but if you dig deep enough, ALPS is a layered and rich psychological study.

Often times at major festivals, we hear that a screenplay or a director award is given to compensate when a great film misses out on the top prize. Rumours about ALPS’ screenplay win at Venice say the same, but in this particular case, I think we can reject the possibility. This script can stand on its own merits.

Still to come: Andrea Arnold, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Joachim Trier and Tahar Rahim to talk about, so stay tuned!