Aloys

One death. a phone call. and a knock on the door of a dark room/ leads to an amazing journey in love/ loneliness and imagination/ but you can never be sure what is real and what is not real. However sad and beautiful the story is/ this is one of those rare films that turns itself into a living dream. But If your into spoon fed narratives/ then please chose another movie. If you can let go. . .then you wont be the same again. I let go. . and enjoyed one the best films I have seen in many years/

From a strange, eerie opening, featuring a continuous string of stylish visuals and ethereal music the audience is led into a semi-surreal fantasy. At first, the mysterious situations that make up the life of small time private eye, Aloys, promises to take us into some interesting psychological territory but, as the story ambles into unfathomable character involvements - the initial element of mystery simply becomes tiresome. The real becomes fused with the unreal - till it all falls over itself. That's when most viewers are likely to become restless and begin to want it all to move toward some sort of closure. Slick images and a mysterious first 25mins is simply not strong enough to hang a limp study of loneliness (or is it madness?) & then expect it to carry the weight of 90mins. As a short experimental movie it could have worked - there's simply not the legs to carry a feature. As to be expected, this overstretched work won praise from festivals but defiantly won't win many patrons. It certainly would be a hard watch to ever re-visit. Photography, mystical score, and the main performance, carry it to a degree but lack of coherence brings it down to little more than an interesting failure.

A very good sci-fi concept, poorly executed. As the film begins, you are reminded of Harry Caul of Coppola's "The Conversation," which was brilliantly played by Gene Hackman.

This film cannot boast of a Hackman or a John Cazale.

You have a dead father being cremated but we are never told how he died.

Secondary characters like Aloys' childhood classmate are never fleshed out. The concept of a drunk Aloy being locked up in a bus does not ring true. It appears he had urinated in his trousers in one shot. In a later shot, there is no such evidence.

All in all it is a film that had so much potential that fails to deliver.

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 corder

Then 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.

A Swiss psychological drama; A story about a loner and private investigator whose surveillance equipment is stolen by someone who offers him the chance to break out from his self-isolation. This melancholic film is inventive, eerie, peculiar, captivating magic realism. It works a theme about escape from grief and loneliness, and addresses issues about digital surveillance and privacy. The film starts promisingly, but sags with the introduction of a weirdo-boy-meets-pretty-girl narrative and their madcap twists whereupon it focuses too much on clever technique than story spine. Nevertheless, intrigue is held across the strange characterisations and imaginative touches.