GFF 2010: Bergfest

With just four actors, one isolated location and a subtext laden with unspoken resentment, Florian Eichinger’s intense, theatrical chamber piece impresses on a tight budget. The cast bring convincing gravitas to their slow-burn emotional tussling: Martin Schleiss, in his feature debut, is quietly temperamental as a young actor forced to acknowledge past suffering when his girlfriend (Anna Bruggemann) dupes him into spending the weekend with his estranged father Hans-Gert (Peter Kurth) and his youthful partner Lavinia (Rosalie Thomass) in a remote Alpine hut. It’s an economical and familiar set-up - stock a pressured scenario with bottled-up protagonists and let the sparks fly - but Eichinger exerts admirable restraint, downplaying distressing revelations yet retaining a tense unpredictability. It’s only let down by occasionally unconvincing behaviour from certain characters, whose actions create dramatic tidiness at the expense of psychological plausibility. Otherwise it’s a strong study of parental guilt and childhood trauma as chilly as the icy vistas it occupies.