The Incredible Snow Woman

Bluesky

What happens to all those fearless and fearsome wild girls once they grow up, but do not become tame? Some of them, like their sister-tropes, manic pixie dream girls, learn their lesson over the course of an indie dramedy that could play at either Sundance or Tribeca. The others try to cheat death repeatedly until it is one time too many. The rest have to wrestle with an adversary more fearsome than themselves – life. We learned from the movies so far that film stars don’t die in Liverpool, but why would explorers not go to find serenity and a peaceful death in the frost around the North Pole?

This is where we first meet Coline (Blanche Gardin), the heroine of Sébastien Betbeder’s eighth feature The Incredible Snow Woman. She is cross-country skiing through the snowy valleys of Greenland on one of her expeditions, facing some bad weather, until we see her lying in the snow, maybe frozen to death.

Back in her home area in the Jura mountains of France, she is facing another kind of danger: while breaking into her brother’s house, she is surprised and pan-hit in the head by the very surprised Basile (Philippe Katerine). We learn that Coline has been fired from her polar explorer job for “gross misconduct”, is about to be dumped by her estranged partner over the phone, is scaring the townsfolk, including her ex-flame Christophe (Laurent Papot) and the children in his class with the presentation of her exploration work that includes the slide photos of both the funny kind – her “mischiefs” – as well the terrifying one – the aftermath of her encounter with an unlucky polar bear. She shows signs of bipolar disorder, while hiding those of physical illness. Both prevent her from doing her primary missions: writing memoirs of her adventures and coming to terms with the new, boring reality.

Once home-bound, Coline is too tough to handle for Basile himself, so he enlists the help of their younger brother Lolo (Bastiein Buillon) who is able to take the siblings on an adventure-like journey over the cliff to their cabin in the mountains. But even that cannot satisfy Coline, so she runs away. At about the half-way point, the writer-director takes us back to the starting point, but this time Coline is found by a duo of Inuits, Ole (Ole Eliassen) and Martika (Martin Jensen), who take her back to their village and take care of her. Maybe for the first time, she has a sense of belonging and calm, but the big secret she tried to hide is about to be exposed…

The mix between the offbeat comedy and the existential drama is not foreign territory for Betbeder whose films operate in that kind of register, somewhat resembling American “indies”, but with a distinctive French touch. Oddly enough, neither is Greenland which served as the background and the inspiration for the filmmaker’s fourth feature Journey To Greenland (2016). The novelty of this Berlinale Panorama film, to a point, is a female character in the centre of action. “to a point” is there because Coline is usually so “feral” that gender only matters as a sort of “amplifier” in that sense.

Betbeder’s directing is sure-handed enough to serve a premise that sometimes sounds silly and sometimes overbearing in a script written in collaboration with Mathieu Robin. It is pretty much aligned with the protagonist’s state of mind, so the calm cinematography by Pierre-Hubert Martin in different shades of white – truth to be told, the choice of locations varies from Greenland to mountains in the winter, so there you go – gets more restlessly hand-held as the situation gets tense, while the editing by Julie Lena tends to become even more hyper-focused on the leading actress is those situations.

However, without Blanche Gardin, who carries the whole film, The Incredible Snow Woman would be a mix of generic dramedy and equally generic comedy that simply tries too hard to send quirky and “subversive” vibes. Her performance, however, lifts it to a slightly higher level. Mind you, it might not be her genuine creation, since there are traces of both younger Jennifer Aniston’s insecurities and the same actress’ unpredictability from her more recent comedy-drama roles to be found. But the very blend serves the purpose.