Dir: Andrew Haigh | Drama 117’ 2026
A Long Winter certainly lives up to its title, unfolding at a pace that feels drawn out in contrast to the abrupt and brutal ending.
In the wake of Some of Us Strangers Haigh this time introduces us to a set of difficult, often unlikeable characters making emotional engagement a challenge, in a story that never quite feels authentic in its 1950s setting, and, unlike Colm Tobin’s source material, struggling to draw us fully into its world. There is an ambition to explore human frailty and the darker corners of interpersonal relationships, but the drama doesn’t always find the nuance or credibility needed to make these people truly compelling, unlike the directors previous outings.
Mike is an awkward, curiously unengaging misfit who does little to make us feel for his predicament. Moping in the wake of his mother Louise’s departure, he seems incapable of moving beyond his own sullen sadness, showing scant empathy for Lester’s anguish at her infidelity, brought about by her unhappiness in the move to the mountains away from the life she was hoping for in the more sophisticated urban milieu of Chicago or Denver.
Rather than exploring the complicated emotions that might bind father and son in their shared distress, the film leaves Mike and his father emotionally one-dimensional, making it difficult to invest in their struggles or understand the response to the family’s disintegration.
More generally, the characters are drawn in broad strokes, their behaviour often feeling contrived rather than organically revealing. The boy who comes to keep house for the two men is an especially frustrating example: potentially central to the unfolding drama, he remains a cypher, his motivations and inner life insufficiently explored to give his presence real dramatic weight.
There is a difference between characters who are difficult to like and those who are difficult to understand. A Long Winter too often falls into the latter category, leaving us at a distance from people whose struggles might otherwise have provided the basis for a subtle study of isolation and fractured relationships. The narrative, meanwhile, never quite establishes the emotional connections or momentum needed to sustain our interest.
The film’s atmosphere is more successful than its storytelling. Its setting lends the drama a visual texture and sense of isolation that the characters themselves rarely manage to convey with comparable subtlety. The landscape becomes a character in its own right, providing an appealing backdrop to the tensions unfolding on screen and offering some of the film’s most effective moments.
The ending, however, is a particular disappointment, failing to provide the resolution or insight that might have brought the preceding events into sharper focus. Rather than leaving us with a satisfying sense of ambiguity, it feels contrived in bringing the various strands together meaningfully.
With its vague echoes of Brokeback Mountain there are glimpses of a more compelling film here, particularly in its visual evocation of isolation and its atmospheric sense of place. But A Long Winter never quite overcomes the limitations of its characterisation and narrative, leaving us with a film whose setting makes a stronger impression than the people inhabiting it. The landscape lingers; the characters remain frustratingly out of reach.
VIENNALE FILM FESTIVAL 2026