Beyond the Hills

The stereotypical WLW movie has two parts. The first part is a romance between two women. The second part is when the women experience tragedy because of their romance. Beyond the Hills only adheres to half of this formula. Despite being almost two and a half hours, Beyond the Hills skips the romance aspect of a WLW movie and jumps right to the tragedy.

Beyond the Hills follows the reunion between Alina and Voichita. As children, Alina and Voichita were in an orphanage together and grew extremely close. Eventually, their relationship developed a physical aspect. However, as adults, Voichita has moved into a bleak, traditionalist convent. When Alina comes to visit her, she does not gel with this. Voichita now spurns Alina’s attempts at a physical relationship because of her religion. Additionally, the outspoken Alina challenges the head priest and this take on Christianity overall. The rest of the nuns subject Alina to increasingly intense ways of “saving her soul.” Nobody gets a happy ending.

As mentioned, the queer aspect of Alina and Voichita’s relationship is never depicted onscreen. They talk about it but there’s no physical affection or romance during the time period of this film. However, the past physical aspect of their relationship is talked about frequently enough and without ambiguity. As such, I’ve decided it’s queer enough to meet the requirements of this website.

It is a beautiful, tragic relationship to watch play out. These characters have such a deep love for one another but have such staggeringly different world views that make them fundamentally incompatible. Alina’s faith is entirely tied to Voichita. However, Voichita’s faith is intrinsically tied to rejecting the love Alina has for her. On a personality level, Alina is far too reactive and Voichita far too passive. In the setting they’re in, Alina courts punishment and attention while Voichita consistently fails to step in and do anything in Alina’s defence. As much as Beyond the Hills is critical of religion and that is a huge factor into this movie’s tragedy, I don’t think there ever was a happy ending for Alina and Voichita. They’re too different.

Beyond the Hills premiered at Cannes. That makes sense because it has a very film festival vibe to it. It’s long, it’s foreign and the focus of the film is about atmosphere more than anything. Beyond the Hills chooses to draw its audience in by making the setting come alive. It really places you into this cold, bleak, out of time religious world that our characters find themselves in. It’s successful in depicting an atmosphere but one could wish for some more actual content in a movie that runs 150 minutes.

As long as it is, the third act of Beyond the Hills feels rushed. This comes after a second act I could not tell you any specifics of. The third act feels tied up in too neat a bow. Characters that did bad get their comeuppance and the movie drives home its point about how traditional, devout religion (or maybe just Christianity) is bad and gets taken down by modern things like medicine and the law. It all feels too neat and surprisingly rushed for a film that enjoys lingering so much.

Beyond the Hills is good. Very good, even. There’s excellent directing, atmosphere and strong performances from the two leads. I also did enjoy how critical the film is of religion. I read the thesis of Beyond the Hills as one about how religion can stifle humanity. Characters in the convent are constantly certain they did the “right” thing because that’s what their faith tells them to do when in reality they are hurting the people around them. Grading on the curve of all films, Beyond the Hills is very good. However, grading it on the curve of similar, Cannes-premiering films, honestly I found Beyond the Hills to be pretty middle of the pack. But a middle of the pack Cannes film is still a pretty damn good film.

Overall rating: 8.7/10

Other WLW films in similar genres