Purely Joyful Movie!

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

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

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.

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

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" 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.