The Dark Valley

A photographer from America rides into a closed Alpine valley shortly before winter shuts it off. Six brothers and their father run the village; at every wedding they decide who the bride belongs to on the first night. The stranger asks to stay and the villagers agree with a strange silence. Once the snow closes the roads, they begin to die. The film is not interested in imitating a western. It is interested in carrying the genre's mould into the Alps: the lone gunman, a town silenced by fear, a past that has to be settled. It is all there, and the change of geography makes the tone colder and quieter. The form is snow and silence: long landscape shots, little dialogue, violence in slow motion. The characters speak a local Alpine dialect, a choice that gives the film a documentary hardness. Andreas Prochaska directed, from Thomas Willmann's novel. It was submitted as Austria's Academy Award entry and took several prizes at the German Film Awards. Sam Riley plays the stranger, Tobias Moretti one of the brothers and Paula Beer the village girl. Who it is for: viewers who like westerns and European experiments with genre. Who it is not for: anyone expecting depth of story. The plot is a simple revenge scheme and most of the characters carry a single function.