Let's start off with a resume, courtesy of Light Night Productions, Switzerland, www.lightnight.ch/2004_aularge.html: Alex, a professional tourist guide, is asked to welcome Sacha,a young woman of Russian extraction. She has participated in a contest and, consequently, won a one-week stay in Geneva. From the outset, the young woman shakes up Alex's plans and drags him along with her through a risky and hazardous treasure-hunt at the confines of Eastern Switzerland. Wanted by the police and hunted down by the mafia, Alex and Sacha decide to shake off their pursuers by moving about more slowly than the others: they then advance through lakes and other roundabout ways. While Alex and Sacha sink deeply into an ever stranger Switzerland, they will observe, discover, oppose and finally love each other to the vanishing point.
This here is a very unusual look at Switzerland, the peaceful country where never ever anything happens that breaks a well-organized routine. This film here tries to be a road-movie, without, in my opinion, really succeeding. Switzerland is too small for this kind of adventure, I am myself a Swiss (not even a stolid one) and know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, there are many implausibilities and, alas, some overdone acting (such as the most unlikely Gilles Tschudi). Jean-Luc Bideau and Maria Schneider are the real kings in this movie with more than moving and credible characters.
However, if you are into mystery, accept some story loopholes and genre-mixing, then this will be a rewarding two hours spent watching Switzerland as you've never seen it.
This here is a very unusual look at Switzerland, the peaceful country where never ever anything happens that breaks a well-organized routine. This film here tries to be a road-movie, without, in my opinion, really succeeding. Switzerland is too small for this kind of adventure, I am myself a Swiss (not even a stolid one) and know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, there are many implausibilities and, alas, some overdone acting (such as the most unlikely Gilles Tschudi). Jean-Luc Bideau and Maria Schneider are the real kings in this movie with more than moving and credible characters.
However, if you are into mystery, accept some story loopholes and genre-mixing, then this will be a rewarding two hours spent watching Switzerland as you've never seen it.
