Note: This is a review of an earlier cut of The Forbidden Room that screened at Sundance and Berlin. It has since been cut down by approximately ten minutes.

For Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, film isn’t just a thing people make. It’s a living thing. A universe existing right next to ours, where time and space collapse into a giant stew of celluloid and pixels. There’s no describing The Forbidden Room, Guy Maddin’s latest film which he co-directed with Johnson. I can merely state facts about it, but to actually attempt to describe the experience of watching it? That’s a fool’s errand because the only way to know about The Forbidden Room is to experience it for yourself. Is it Guy Maddin’s best work to date? Probably. Is it a masterpiece? Definitely. Maddin, who’s known for having a progressive and spiritual perspective towards cinema, has made what might be the purest representation of his mindset on film to date.

How did The Forbidden Room get here? You could say it all started back at the invention of film itself (for dramatic purposes), or five years ago (for practical purposes). Maddin created an installation called Hauntings that had him researching abandoned projects by master filmmakers and re-creating scenes from these “lost” films. Eventually, Maddin’s interests turned from the figurative to the literal; he began looking (with Johnson) into real films that are forever lost, either destroyed or unintentionally abandoned. After researching these films, Maddin began remaking them, recruiting a cast of big, international arthouse names (Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Roy Dupuis, Ariane Labed, Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros and lots more) to come in and “channel” the spirits of these lost films, acting them out in a series of short film remakes. How do you remake something you haven’t seen? Watch The Forbidden Room and find out.

So what is The Forbidden Room about? Rather than go for an episodic structure, Maddin and Johnson link every story together through a nesting doll structure that goes so deep it makes a film like Inception look like a pop-up book. It all starts with an old man in a bathrobe (Louis Negin, who winds up in almost every “remake” in some sort of role) giving advice on how to take a bath. The camera then goes under the bath water, where it reveals a submarine full of trapped men. Their captain is missing, their cargo of blasting jelly can explode at any minute, and their oxygen supply is low, requiring them to suck on pancakes to try and get oxygen from the air pockets. Suddenly, a lumberjack (Dupuis) finds his way onto the submarine, and when the men ask how he got there, the film flashes back to tell his story: while chopping trees in the forest, he decides to rescue the beautiful Margot (Clara Furey) from The Red Wolves, described as “the most feared forest bandits in all of Holstein-Schleswig.” The lumberjack goes off to rescue Margot who then has a dream where she’s an amnesiac bar singer, a bar where an indescribable singer performs a song about a man (Kier) obsessed with grabbing asses, which transitions into a dreaming volcano, and then a newspaper article within the volcano’s dream, and then the inside of an x-ray of a pelvis, and then…

The amount of transitions, digressions and leveling up and down within storylines just goes on and on, to the point where trying to make heads or tails of anything loses its meaning. Everything co-exists and stands alone. High art and low art combine into one. Dreams, memories, fantasies and nightmares weave in and out of each other. Maddin and Johnson put the bulk of their efforts into the post-production process, taking the digitally shot footage and dousing it with every possible imperfection or antiquated method from both analog and digital eras: two-strip Technicolor, warped stock, burn marks, title cards, data moshing, colour dyes, and whatever else they could pull out from this cinematic stew they conjured up. And through all of this madness, Maddin and Johnson have created an exhaustive and hilarious masterwork. The sort of film where a hysterical title card like “The skull-faced man and his gang of Skeletal Insurance Defrauders” gets lost in the shuffle of the seemingly endless ideas thrown on-screen from start to end. It’s a film that has endless rewatch value because it’s impossible to remember every detail from it. It’s one of the most perfect collections of imperfections ever made. It is, quite simply, The Forbidden Room.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg does not shy away from showing absurd situations in unorthodox environments, something that has become a staple in the last few years of Greek cinema. Attenberg is a film that explores mankind’s primal desires (sex) and unavoidable extermination of life (death). Though the film may not be completely satisfying and does not deliver the same impact as a film like Dogtooth did; Attenberg is daring, bold and ambitious, qualities that many films only strive to achieve.

Attenberg sets the tone of the film right from opening scene when Marina (Ariane Labed) and Bella (Evangelia Randou) open-mouth French kiss, which will likely rank up there in the most awkward on screen kiss you have ever witnessed. The reasoning behind the exchange is that Bella is teaching her sexually inexperienced best friend how to kiss properly. Marina finds this act to be disgusting and therefore gives up on trying to learn. After Bella explains to Marina that she needs to create more saliva or it will not work, the result is the two friends spitting on each other immediately followed by mimicking wild cats hissing at each other. This opening scene serves as a prelude as to what to expect for the rest of the film.

Marina’s sudden interest in sex seems a consequence of her father’s recent poor health. Her dying father is her only other companion in life aside from Bella. The relationship they share is a particularly odd one because at times the conversations they have are on the very edge of being taboo, even bringing up what exactly is considered socially taboo in conversation. Perhaps because her mother had passed away several years ago is the reason that Marina has developed into a daddy’s girl. It is not explicitly clear as to why she has a sudden desire to explore her sexuality but it is likely due to her trying to fill the void of companionship when her father is gone. But what is most alarming about Marina is her repression to physical contact that leaves her questioning herself about the possibility of being asexual.

The purpose behind Attenberg is to examine the human species much like how nature shows examine animals. This is made very obvious when characters throughout the film are shown mimicking the sounds and movements of animals that they have seen from these shows. The film even receives its title from a play on the legendary nature documentary narrator Sir David Attenborough’s last name.

Unfortunately, Attenberg sounds a lot more interesting than the film actually ends up being. The film did serve as a fascinating character study of the human species at times, but the film did not quite live up to its full potential all said and done. There is no question that Attenberg was heavily influenced by Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (Lanthimos even plays an acting role in the film), and the two do share a common overall theme of effects of social isolation and over-protective parenting. Although Attenberg is not quite as memorable as Dogtooth, the film is still commendable for what it tried to achieve, even if it was not completely successful.

Giorgos Lanthimos’ Alps is a follow-up (some say companion piece) to his amazing 2009 film Dogtooth. The gist of the film is about how the main character loses her own identity while trying to impersonate others. The premise may not even sound all that weird because I stripped out the absurd elements that surround it. Alps may be too bizarre for some, however, you sign up for it with Lanthimos behind the camera. I found the unsettling observations in the film fascinating but not as much right at first. It is a film that sits with you awhile until you realize how purposeful the oddities were.

A woman rhythmically ribbon dances to classic orchestra music in an empty gymnasium except for one man. After her flawless routine she sits down in discouragement. She wants to do something with more pop she explains. But the man insists that she is not ready for it yet and scolds her for not trusting his judgment. He goes on to say that if she raises her voice to him again (which she did not to begin with) then he will break her arms and legs. This is the kind of “coach” that you come to expect from a Lanthimos film.

A group of people gather and explain on how they came up with the name Alps to call themselves. There were two reasons why the decided on Alps. The first is that it does not reveal anything about what they are doing. The second reason is because the Alps is a mountain range that no other mountains can substitute. The word substitute is important there because it explains what they actually do.

About a third of the way into Alps it becomes clear that they are substitutes for people that have recently passed away. When people lose their loved ones at the hospital this group of people offer to become the person that died as a way to ease the pain for the family. They completely emulate the deceased person; wear their clothes, say things in the way the person would have said things, and even live in their homes.

The scenes where the substitute is trying to act like the person that passed away were the best. It was awkward to watch them trying to fill the void of the person the family missed. Even though it is amusing to watch them impersonate someone else, the film does bring up a good question. Would people who loosely resembled someone that passed away close to you actually help ease the grieving process?

In the end Alps is less about those grieving loved ones, and more about the impersonator needing the grievers. Switching the roles between who needed who in order to function in life was by far the most interesting aspect of the film. In order to accurately portray someone, you must become that person, like an actor typically tries to do. The film shows just how dangerous it is to cling on to someone else’s identity.

Alps is not quite as disturbing but it is as equally bizarre as Dogtooth. You can definitely tell they were both directed by Giorgos Lanthimos, who already has created a unique style of his own. And a fantastic one at that. There were many similarities between both films; the color saturation, deadpan dialog and outlandish characters. Another note on characters, in both films none of the main characters have real names.

Depending on how you literal you took Dogtooth, you could consider it a pretty obvious satire on over-protective parenting. On the surface, Alps could be considered it a satire on over-acting. Dialog is delivered in an obvious mesmerized manner in scenes where the substitute presumably sounds nothing like the person they are portraying. Also characters heavily rely on objects to carryout the impersonation of the dead person they are trying to become, such as wearing a pair of shoes or perfume.

In true Lanthimos fashion, Alps allows you to interpret just how literal you want to take the themes found in it. However, Alps is more compelling the deeper you look into it. Even though it did not quite reach the level that Dogtooth got to for me, it still was a fascinating film that you simply cannot take your eyes off of. Lanthimos has certainly made his mark as director to watch out for.