Michael Haneke directs Isabelle Huppert, Anaïs Demoustier and Hakim Taleb in this arthouse post-apocalyptic drama where a middle class family find themselves without shelter or comfort in a landscape pushed back to the Dark Ages by some unseen cataclysm.

I was dreading this. It is not like Haneke avoids a pessimistic view of humanity at the best of times. And he isn’t shy of extreme and shocking violence. So choosing to witness what he would do to a family in a lawless world of brutality and scarcity wasn’t exactly the most enticing proposition for a Saturday night on the couch. And if you’ve come for that then I’m sure Time of the Wolf doesn’t disappoint but it was a more palatable, meditative experience than I expected. Unless you are an animal lover! Huppert and Demoustier give affecting internal performances. The depressing vision of a countryside without supplies is convincing. As you’d expect family units and bourgeois beliefs are dissolved in a slow acid bath of relentless misery. But this also seems to be a film about faith. Everyone tries to hold onto some greater idea of how the world works, even when reality suggests a godless and compassionless and rule-free existence.

7

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