EUPHORIA PLAT D: Lisa Langseth. Sweden/Germany. 98 min. Sep. 11, 8:15 pm, Winter Garden Sep 12, 9:30 am, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1 Sep 16, 6:30 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1. Rating: NN
Artist Ines (Alicia Vikander) joins her older sister Emilie (Eva Green) for a holiday that turns out to have a darker purpose: Emilie is terminally ill, and she’s brought Ines to witness her death at a resort designed for such an exit.
Casting Vikander and Green as sisters is a brilliant move. Both actors share a watchful intelligence, and Vikander’s delicacy and Green’s hard edges clash in exactly the right way to establish decades of sibling discomfort. But having established her premise and characters, writer/director Langseth – who directed Vikander in Pure and Hotel – does absolutely nothing with them, letting Euphoria drift through one scene after another without ever gaining dramatic momentum or emotional weight.
Langseth doesn’t even do much with her core concept of a resort that lets you plan your own death the other guests just sort of mope around, with the exception of Charles Dance, who has some fun as a wealthy man whose exit involves polishing his internet presence and throwing himself a concert, but his character feels like a photocopy of Ralph Fiennes in from A Bigger Splash. And Charlotte Rampling projects an empathetic calm as Green’s end-of-life guide, but she’s so subtle she almost disappears.
