Director Michael Haneke follows up his hit The Piano Teacher with this chilly, distant effort set in a near future where some kind of apocalypse has turned everyone into arguing savages who barter for water, food, and shelter. Isabelle Huppert plays the widowed mother of two children, forced to hit the road with nothing more than a bicycle and a lighter, until the family is met by a cynical teenage boy with survival instincts who gives them a hand. Soon, a little community springs up in an abandoned train station, but the hope that a train will eventually come slowly dwindles. The unrelentingly depressing Time of the Wolf features some stunning technical work: most of the film takes place in the blackness of night or the dark pre-dawn or post-dusk, and the superb lighting is appropriately frightening and dislocating. In addition, Haneke's expert handling of his actors enables Huppert to come across even more beautifully and with more emotional resonance than she did in The Piano Teacher. Yet this glumly serious film came out at around the same time as two remarkably similar films, Andre Techine's Strayed and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, both of which get the film's central ideas across with far more wit and compassion. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include: interviews with Haneke and Huppert, filmographies, production footage, a trailer, and previews. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a somewhat disappointing film.] (J.M. Anderson)
Time of the Wolf
Palm, 109 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $24.99, Dec. 14 Volume 20, Issue 1
Time of the Wolf
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