L'Engloutie (2025)

This is yet another one of those rare, boring films that you can only find in an art house cinema. A young, sexually driven woman enters a mountain village in the late 19th century to educate the children to become modern citizens, but when she makes love to the young men in the village, those men disappear afterwards in an avalanche. The villagers are superstitious because they are 'backward,' but even a rational person would have thoughts about that; however, nothing really happens otherwise, and nothing is done with that nymph or siren theme—which can also be interpreted metaphorically: the temptations of modernity are as irresistible as they are fatal. At most, the film has a 'postmodern' message in the sense that the woman's modern mission fails and she must acknowledge her superior in nature and tradition. I am being generous with two stars for the film's atmosphere, because that atmosphere also masks the lack of substance.

Translated from Dutch · View original

In late 1899, a young French schoolteacher [Galatéa Bellugi] teaches the two children of a close-knit community in the Hautes Alpes on the Italian border. When the young men of the community give in to her sexual desires, things go wrong in the form of cringe-worthy metaphors (thunderstorms, avalanches, and snow) for the “dangers” of female sexuality. Aside from a few sex scenes, this mostly reminds one of the morality melodramas that audiences had already had enough of 100 years earlier! Good for an unintentional laugh here and there; if you manage to stay awake, that is.

Translated from Dutch · View original