The heyday of the classic Western may be over, but like certain types of clothing that never go completely out of style, it continues to demonstrate its flexibility to wrap around a surprising variety of stories.
Still, one doesn’t expect to see an angry female vigilante in a cowboy hat riding into a timeless feudal enclave in 19th century Luxembourg, where Rapunzel could more plausibly be letting down her hair from the upper floors of the castle. The Last Ashes (Läif a Séil) ambitiously melds the grand American Western tradition with a dark fairy tale à la Charles Perrault without the hint of a smile, yet this clash of cinematic civilizations gives the film a memorable amount of character and modernity.
Produced by Samsa Film, which brought us Corsage, Loïc Tanson’s original first feature is Luxembourg’s submission to the international feature race at the Academy Awards.
In a long prologue to the main action set in 1838, shortly before Luxembourg became an independent country, we are taken to an isolated high castle ruled by the tyrannical Graff (an ogre-like Jules Werner), who treats the serfs living within the walls of the enclave like his private property. The villagers grow the grain and he gives it back to them as loaves of bread, saving them from the raging famine and, thanks to the castle being completely cut off from the outside world, from disease and death. It’s a bargain they pay for dearly with their freedom.
One of Graff’s privileges, enforced by the castle’s at-your-service priest Meyers (Jean-Paul Maes), is to deflower the farmers’ 12-year-old daughters. These grotesque figures out of a scary bedtime story have already imposed eerie mud masks on all the village’s young girls, but they haven’t reckoned on willful little Hélène (played by the spirited Giusi Carenza), who is so traumatized by this ritual rape she ignites rebellion in several other characters. The rebels are quickly dealt with, and the girl is left to die in the fields.
Fifteen years have passed. It’s not hard to guess the true identity of the buckskin-clad rider Oona (Sophie Mousel), who turns up with Native American tattoos on her face and impressive skills handling horses and knives. Mousel, a TV and genre actress, is suitably enigmatic in this edgy hybrid role where her physical prowess is key. However, she keeps Oona this side of a super-heroine and she is not impervious to bullets and imprisonment, or to human reactions like fear and discouragement.
The wavy tattoos on her face and her ability to sleep on the back on her horse earn her the name “The Stranger” with the castle folk. Her savage traits are explained away, a little too glibly, as the result of her stay with a Native American tribe after being bartered for cattle by some settlers. An unlikely backstory, but even more surprising is how little use Tanson and his co-screenwriter Frédéric Zeimet make of it, beyond the visual level. It does somehow account for Oona’s very modern feminist persona, so fiercely in contrast to the medieval-minded people around her and Graff’s annoying textbook sexism (“Girls have to know their place. Only male fireflies fly,” and so on.)
Though the plot pivots around Oona’s murderous thirst for revenge on the irascible patriarch and his nasty extended family, and she takes out the priest Meyers in a creative way, there is a notable lack of on-screen violence that makes the film feel a trifle subdued at times, at least compared to its genre models. The emphasis often turns to how Oona bonds with the enslaved women of the castle, Marie and Sidonie, and her unvoiced attraction to her childhood playmate Jon (Timo Wagner), now reduced to a limping, hamstrung priest and servant to Graff. The large cast of characters is quite distinctive with their own personalities; even the uniformed soldiers who appear to build a railroad through the wilderness (this is clearly a version of the Fordian cavalry riding in to save the day, but only in the last scene.)
Nicos Welter’s luxurious CinemaScope cinematography picks up the harshness of life outside the castle, where a wild-looking woods affords the only outlet to freedom beyond the castle walls, but also offers striking candlelit churches and the rare beauty of light filtering into interiors. As the obsessively confining POV shots following young Hélène in the prologue give way to the dreamlike Western iconography associated with her older version Oona, black-and-white 16mm photography melts into color that is much easier on the eye and rife with possibilities, including freedom. The camerawork also has its highly creative moments, most notably circling upside side on itself in several judiciously used shots accompanied by music. It will come as no surprise that director began his career as a film critic.
Director, editor: Loïc Tanson
Screenwriters: Frédéric Zeimet and Loïc Tanson
Co-producer: Patrick Quinet
Line producer: Brigitte Kerger-Santos
Cast: Sophie Mousel, Jules Werner, Luc Schiltz, Timo Wagner, Philippe Thelen, Marie Jung, Jeanne Werner, Tommy Schlesser, Jean-Paul Maes, Max Gindorff
Cinematography: Nicos Welter
Production design: Patricia Schaffer
Costume design: Magdalena Labuz
Music: Thorunn Egilsdottir & Mike Koster
Sound: Céline Bodson
Sound design: Jeroen Truijens
Production companies: Samsa in association with Artémis Productions
World sales: One Eyed Films
Venue: world premiere Sitges Film Festival
In Luxembourgish, Ojibwé
125 minutes
