Far North Review

The empty ice-planes of the Arctic form the barren backdrop to this skeletal story, which exists in a strange state of mythical realism before plunging headfirst into unfathomable horror.

Made on location by Asif Akadia, the British director whose richly hypnotic debut The Warrior from 2001 was followed by horror The Return, Far North's eerie marriage of allegory and symbol is actually reminiscent of Russian director Andrei Zvyaginstev's 2003 masterpiece, also called The Return. Kapadia's adaptation of Sara Maitland's short story approaches basic human impulses using the elemental language of fable. It's a strategy which grants Far North a power that's both primal and otherworldly as frozen emotion thaws beneath the heavy skies of the Arctic.

Saiva (Michelle Yeoh) and her younger companion Anja (Michelle Krusiac) are two women moving without apparent purpose across the Arctic, pitching camp on the ice and surviving on dog and reindeer meat. The time is clearly the present yet Far North's context is tantalisingly timeless. The only explanation for the women's nomadic isolation comes in Saiva's opening statement - a rare concession to conventional exposition - that she was cursed at birth by a shaman who damned her to destroy anyone with whom she became close.

Trekking across the tundra, Saiva runs into Loki (Sean Bean), a soldier on the run from a conflict ravaging the Arctic, the nature of which is never quite explicit - unlike the brutality of the Russian invaders, which is. The two women take Loki in and their relationship is marked by a complicated mix of sexual attraction, power and jealousy, at the heart of which is Loki's liaison with Anja, and Saiva's consequent, long-simmering resentment.