The Alps have never felt this claustrophobic — marriage counseling via torture, Austrian style.
A couple travel to the mountains to talk about their marital crisis. When the wife falls during the hike and only survives seriously injured, she is at the mercy of her pathologically jealous husband, who now makes her life a living hell, vacillating between loving care and hateful torment. A thematically confused thriller that even the routine staging cannot save.
Acting
Prochnow's switch from tender to terrifying in seconds.
Cinematography
Mountain isolation that traps you with nowhere to look away.
Director
Xaver Schwarzenberger
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Schwarzenberger was primarily a cinematographer (Amadeus, Out of Africa) — this explains the gorgeous dread but also the thematic murkiness.
1995 Austrian cinema was wrestling with national identity post-Waldheim; domestic tyranny as metaphor runs through period thrillers.
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