“A road movie in reverse,” is how Swiss writer/director Ursula Meier describes her intriguing, promising debut feature, which revolves around a family living happily in a house next to a stretch of unused motorway.
But when the road is opened up to traffic, the parents (played by Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet) and their three children struggle to cling on to their cosy existence. Meier handles the tone-shifts with admirable assurance in this sweepingly shot fable.
Meanwhile, the autoroute itself proves a resonant metaphor for the modern world, as characters project their anxieties and neuroses onto its tarmac surface.
