Aloys (2016)

Fantastic!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's difficult because I do not know what he's telling me. I admit that I like rational and linear scripts, but this film is totally unclassifiable. It's a movie so absurd that it's about seeing the characters in several places at once without one because it loses me.It is so irrational that there comes a time that only gets tired and that is just waiting for the end.I do not know how the actors are, because although I see them well, but I do not know what they are telling me, so I do not know if they do it right or wrong.At first, I was surprised by the photography. I thought it was very good. But of course, when I checked that I did not know he was telling me, I do not know if he supports the story or not. Which is pretty, yes, but where is it going?His address, since for me it does not exist, because it has no way, because it is very bad.I think there are better things to invest your time

Aloys Aldon is a lonely man, he works as a Private Detective in Switzerland. He was under the thrall of his father who has just died and now he is alone with a cat who seems estranged and has a magnesium deficiency. He has spent his life viewing the World through the view finder of his cam corderThen something happens that makes him realise just how bland his existence is and that he has all the charm of a disused latrine – but strangely it awakens in him a part of his being that he had felt erstwhile lost. Now this is a strange film and it is meant to be. It co-mingles reality with fantasy in a way that is completely believable.The music is often portentous or hinting at a dripping emotion like a dam about to burst. The shots are all beautifully framed and the tension creeps up on you without you realising it – only to be broken by moments of release. In short a film that a lot of thought and soul has gone into. It is a slow starter though a very slow start but it is so worth staying with – this is one for those who appreciate what cinema can do and not expect it to be as they have always known.

Honestly, I don't know how I stumbled across this film. I was just minding my own business, looking for a movie to watch and so I checked my 2016 watchlist. When I checked it a film called 'Aloys' was starring back at me. So I told myself that if I could find it, I would watch this little film. A little film that I couldn't even remember wanting to see. But find it, I did. The best way to really describe this film is that it's a hybrid between 'Her' and something like 'Synecdoche New York'. Simply put, this is a romance of sorts that has a lot of visual metaphors. It's a kind of bizarro little film that feels like a bunch of friends put together just because they could.Mainly the film is about a private investigator who recently lost the one person he was close to, his father. The film picks up shortly after the funeral for his dad. As the films goes along we see that this man is stuck in a deep rut. He's completely isolated from the world and does nothing but secretly tape people and then re-watch it over and over. That is, until he gets his camera robbed.From then the robber begins calling him and telling him that he needs to get out of his shell if he wants his stuff back. The woman and him form a relationship over the phone and fall for each other. They do this by simultaneously imagining themselves with each other doing mundane tasks. Eating food together, talking at a table, playing the piano etc. Of course both of them are just sitting in their own rooms picturing it.The film does a great job showing that these people can have a genuine connection. Both helping each other break out of their own shells. While both of these characters are horribly depressed the film manages to be incredibly fun to watch at points. There's a wonderful scene where they throw a party at Aloys (private investigator man) house. Where all the people Aloys has come into contact with during the movie are dancing and having a good time.This is what really surprised me about this film. Where 'Her' Focuses on relationships this film focuses more on people in relationships. And It has a great grasp on its characters. They are both sad, lonely people but they both have distinct voices. We understand them and their struggle. Which just makes us want to see them connect more. For me, 'Her' is a far superior film but 'Aloys' has quite a few surprises up its sleeve for anyone willing to give it a chance. It talks a lot about relationship expectations vs reality without becoming sappy or unbelievable. We see these two picture themselves in a perfect, bright, colorful, happy relationship when they haven't even met each other. And its this realization that hits you time and time again throughout these sequences.And every time it does you just feel a little worse. There was numerous times when I was just yelling, "TAKE HER OUT FOR REAL!" to myself. While this is a film that I do like, it isn't perfect. As it marches to the finish it starts to feel a bit full of itself. There are times when we jump around between reality and numerous different fantasies and I was left wondering, why? I wanted an explanation for all of it that never came. It felt like the film didn't really know where to go near the end. So, it just threw in various dream like sequences that didn't fit with what was happening. That being said, the last shot of the film almost completely redeems it. It's the basic, so close but so far. And it works so amazingly well for this movie. Overall, I really liked this movie. It's genuinely well constructed and written. But what makes this film work, is the characters. You actually know and like these two people. They share a bond that feels real. Even outside of the main romance, this film feels like a movie made by someone who's been in the business for a while. It's breathtaking in it's style, framing, and blocking of shots. If the end was tightened up this could've been one of my favorite films of the year. As it is, this is still a great movie that I quite enjoyed.

"Aloys" is a 90-minute live action movie that had its world premiere this year in 2016. Do not be fooled by the presence of lead actor Georg Friedrich. He may be Austrian, but this is nonetheless a French/Swiss co-production that resulted in a Swiss-language film. The writer and director is relatively young Swiss filmmaker Tobias Nölle and looking at the awards attention this film already received, it is definitely his biggest success so far. This is also thanks to Friedrich I am sure as he is among Austria's finest right now and you could almost call this film a one-man show for him, even if his female co-lead Tilde von Overbeck gets more and more screen time the longer the film goes on. And she may also be the biggest problem of this movie. With this statement, I am not referring to her acting, but to her character in general and how she was written. I very much enjoyed the film when it was just Friedrich and his life, how he did his job, how he dealt with his father's death, how he coped with meeting a former school mate etc. When the focus switches to his relationship to the character named Vera, it becomes an entirely different movie. The whole premise of somebody entering the main character's life in such a mysterious and drastic fashion is already pretty absurd, but I could have dealt with that if the movie had not turned into such a mess. What we see is all so absurd and goes completely against what we hear. Apart from table scene at the Asian restaurant, it is never clear what is fiction and what is fact sadly. And the words chosen also quickly feel pretty contrived and pretentious sometimes even. The characters add very little and feel (depsite the different physics) mostly interchangeable as they add nothing to the story at all. Such a shame. All this also hurts the final shot, which was actually pretty nice with the two uniting at the hospital, but I could not even appreciate this scene anymore after all the mess from earlier. I will not go a lot into detail, but one of the worst scenes is when the image of the woman changes into the image of the protagonist's dead father. It was really all style over substance at that point. Maybe the maker understood what he wanted to depict and tell us with this movie, but he sure did not succeed in making a film where the audience understands it. This film was definitely a missed opportunity as they could have turned this into one of the best German-language films from this year if they had chosen a different story path halfway in. Oh yeah, I just said "German", but the accents here are pretty thick, so I definitely recommend subtitles regardless of you being a native German or native English speaker. But I recommend much more to stay away from this film as it was not a rewarding watch. Thumbs down.