FAR NORTH. Dir Asif Kapadia. 2008

Sara Maitland’s short story is set in the Arctic, filmed in barren icescapes and stony shores. Saiva (Michelle Yeoh) has cast herself out into the cold wilderness, cursed: all who love her are doomed, so she keeps moving, away from people, eking out her existence. Her only company is a baby she saved from a massacre when she was a young woman, and the girl is now full grown.

The two women hunt seals, birds, deer, and keep warm under layers of wolfskin, pitching their yurt in bleak landscapes amidst the Arctic winds. The silence of the film is calming, the script is almost wordless, but the cinematography is rich with facial expression and graphic killing scenes.

The film opens with Saiva hungry to the point of desperation. Cradling the head of one of her dogs, she soothes it, caresses it, then cuts its throat. The meat is tough but the two women have to live.

Into this menacing territory stumbles Loki (Sean Bean), close to death and at their mercy. Saiva’s curiosity about this ill equipped man is her weakness. She saves him, tends him and he tells her he is an escaped POW, on the run after being ordered to kill women and children. Soldiers venture into the icy wastes to track down and kill the nomadic people but Saiva and her adopted daughter have managed to evade them.

Two women and one man in a small tent... it seems that Loki is warming to Saiva but, when the daughter notices, she competes, and wins. Young, pretty and flirtatious, unbroken by tragedy, she and Loki become lovers and plan to leave the lifeless ice to seek a community where they can raise a family.

In this astonishing film, Saiva gives Loki life and he repays her by taking from her what is most precious, company. She stands alone, bereft. The climax to this story is unexpected, shocking and macabre.

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