…Despite the seemingly innocuous gestures of household life, a dark, unmanageable world seems to want to erupt from it. At one point it literally does: in a stunning image, the milk the mother pours for her son overflows the glass onto the table, the floor, and eventually down the hall in an endless stream. This uncontrolled secretion, pure white, is disturbingly connected to the enigmatic maternal body. The sparse decor of the home, the primary color scheme, and high key lighting all emphasize the preternatural clarity of the image in Alpsee. As in allegory, the sharp definition of the image belies its opaque, brooding signification. The pristine look of this film thus gives rise to its confusing, nightmarish quality, borne out of its name: the German word for nightmare is Alptraum.

Alice A. Kuzniar, The Queer German Cinema, Stanford 2000