Alaska Johansson (2013)

Alaska Johansson is considered one of the best headhunters at her company. Her colleagues give her a round-the-world trip, and her boss encourages her to take a few months off. Johansson seems cool and conscientious. She is impeccably dressed and has a flawless body. But cracks begin to appear in her seemingly perfect world. Her boss ends his affair with Johansson out of fear of his wife. Alaska goes home. In the shower, she washes herself compulsively. She throws every item of clothing she has worn into the trash after wearing it once. At first, she appears to go about her daily routines in her new, unfinished apartment. Then, however, she mixes herself a cocktail containing a large number of pills. Just as she is about to drink it, someone knocks at her door. A child is standing there, asking for sweets. It is wearing a white sheet with holes for its eyes. The child, dressed as a ghost, races through the apartment and wants to drink the poisoned cocktail, but Alaska stops it. Suddenly, it vanishes without a trace. Alaska sees it in the neighbor’s apartment and rings the bell to drop off a box of chocolates for what she assumes is the daughter of the neighbor who has just moved in. But the neighbor has no daughter; he lives alone. Later, Alaska hears the same child calling for help from inside her neighbor’s car. It seems to be kicking at the inside of the car. When she presses the neighbor to open it, the child has disappeared again. Alaska decides to call the police. The next day, Alaska gets into her car to make up with her boss. At a traffic light, her car suddenly starts moving on its own and comes to a stop only after a serious crash. Alaska is taken to the hospital. The doctor treating her examines the X-rays and makes a disturbing discovery: her body is riddled with numerous staples and screws, indicating that she has undergone many surgical procedures. She was born deformed, and her father, a famous plastic surgeon, transformed her into the attractive woman she is now. At an elegant party at her parents’ villa, the ghost child appears to her again. Alaska manages to pull the sheet off the child’s head and recognizes her former “ugly” self, but Alaska is immediately sedated with an injection. She wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, still seeing her former self standing in the room—someone no one else can see. The “neighbor” works as an orderly at the hospital, and the doctor who treated her after the accident works there too; he is now her psychiatrist. Alaska commits suicide. In the final scene, Alaska and her child self are seen in Alaska’s snowy wasteland, embracing each other.