Feb 14 - "You were ready to do it. That's what counts"

Time of the Wolf (2003)

dir. Michael Haneke

CAST

Isabelle Huppert (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)
Patrice Chereau

Anaïs Demoustier
Lucas Biscombe

Here's a terrible choice for Saint Valentine's day, but otherwise a very powerful movie. If any of you saw The Road (2009), you might enjoy this movie as the premise as well as the tone is very similar. That being said, Time of the Wolf is not a plot-driven movie, but leans upon the emotional reactions of the characters to keep the story going. It is about a mother and her two children struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of sorts. Like The Road, we are never informed about the nature of the disaster or the extent of its impact. We learn that all of the water has become contaminated, but it also seems like there is some hope for reconstruction, the promise of supplies always about to be delivered from the South, and the wait for a train that will take our heroes someplace better.

As for the name, I'm not sure. There aren't any wolves in the movie. There's a bit of a motif with the wild dogs however, and one particular poignant scene where the daughter, Eva, is talking with a boy about her own age, and he says that he tried to befriend one of the dogs, but when they ran short of food the dog bit him, and so he killed it. In another scene, Eva and the boy hide together after he steals one of the milk-goats from the village, when the goat begins to struggle and bleat, he kills it. Eva admonishes him then, saying, "I thought you would help me, but you just ruin everything."