Dir: Louise Hémon | Cast: Galatea Bellugi, Matthieu Lucci, Samuel Kircher | Thriller 97’
It’s 1899. A fierce snowstorm is raging in Soudain a remote hamlet high in the Alps on the border with Italy.
Aimée, a young teacher (Gallatea Bellugi), finds herself stranded there for the rest of the winter, rather like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, she will be grounded in this tightly knit community to make sure the village’s children keep up their schooling. Shortly after her arrival a young mountain dweller has disappeared in an avalanche, and from then on men start disappearing and suspicions start to fall on the young teacher.
Director Louise Hemon has cut her teeth with TV fare and a few shorts but this is her first long form feature. With its dimly lit interior scenes, use of academy ratio and windswept soundscape, Hemon creates the authentic and unsettling sense of the remoteness of the setting at the turn of the 19th century, and the backwardness of these God-fearing locals who speak in an dialect, a mixture of Italian and French.
Round the fireside the wary villagers share tales of folklore, a stranded shepherd and of the Boye, a siren capable of causing tragedy with her tempting allure. When Grandpa Jupiter dies they hoist the coffin on Aimee’s roof so he won’t get eaten by wild animals but instead will enjoy the sounds of the children playing and laughing for company. Aimee is not pleased. The New Year is a rowdy celebration and everyone cheers up but soon afterwards Pépin disappears during the night, and then Aimee goes down with a strange fever.
This is a wonderfully atmospheric and imaginative film with its surreal elements and fabulous mountain settings. And Hemon leaves us to make up our own minds about the ending. @MeredithTaylor
QUINZAINE DES RÉALISATEURS | CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2025