Alpine Fire

This bizarre import from Switzerland tells the strange tale of a deaf-mute adolescent boy (superbly played by Thomas Nock), who is struggling to come to terms with his increasingly sexual and rebellious nature on an isolated farm in the Alps. Pampered by his mother, provoked by his father, the boy turns to his older sister (Johanna Lier) for understanding and recognition. The two engage in an incestuous relationship that results in the sister's pregnancy. When the parents discover what their children have been up to, the film, slow-moving up to this point, races swiftly into its final tragic act. To its credit, Alpine Fire treats the subject of incest with delicacy; and novelist/director Fredi Murer displays rare insight into the emotional turbulence of those terrible teen years. The film has moments of sheer black comedy. When the father demonstrates an electric fence to his son (obviously with some glee) by allowing him to touch it, the son later turns around and runs a wire into the dog's food dish. But the offbeat rewards are only here for the patient viewer; most people will be put off by the film's snail pace and its cryptic ending. Nevertheless, this can be recommended for libraries with larger foreign film collections--especially as it had a very limited release in theaters in the U.S. (R. Pitman)