Up the Mountain

The "ten-or-twenty-years after reunion in which one takes stock of the situation" is a threadbare subject ;countless movies deal with it ;ditto for the return to basics , to nature ,...the way we were...

This effort eschews the feel good side which mars today's scene;it's got a darker side to it ,and even a sense of mystery ,mainly in its first part and it has a great asset : the child actors strongly resemble the grown-ups .

The three principals' reunion is caused by the funeral of Hugo's elder brother who was not really close to the threesome; a flashback reveals a very strange personality ,perhaps gay . The female character ,too sure of herself , provides the weakest link ,being too conventional , too square ,too normal,too predictable ;on the other hand, Stan is downright disturbing : is he becoming a schizophrenic? His nightmares ,his night scenes, his "other me" ,a scary creature -special effect kept to the minimum and all the more bewildering- make him the stand out of the screenplay . Hugo ,an ex-teacher , who experimented trauma when he was still a child , wants to become a stand up comic : it's a smart way to let us know about his past and his persona when he reads his first work to his two friends .

The director takes advantage of the splendid mountain landscapes and blends the past with the present ,sometimes going as far as to place the children and the adults in the same shot. It does not always work ;the same can be said of the taxi driver who " begins Stan's healing " a rather confusing trick .

But an unusual use of secondary characters such as the solitary man whose wife left him or the mayor suffering from Alzheimer 's desease who believes he is still ruling the village as he did when the heroes were still going to school , or the TV Reality shows buff who had his short claim to fame and still wondering at it ,makes this mountain trip worthwhile .