Novice nun Elisabeth (Lilith Grasmug) is forced to return home to her family following the mysterious death of her older sister. (Photos courtesy of Dekanalog)
By Richard Ades
Switzerland’s nominee for 2023’s international Oscar is Thunder, the quietly striking debut feature of writer-director Carmen Jaquier.
Critics have compared the French-language film to various acclaimed predecessors, and Jaquier herself has said its style was inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light.
Given that its heroine is a novice nun who’s forced to leave an Alpine nunnery and rejoin secular life, the most obvious comparison is to The Sound of Music, but the similarities are only on the surface. While that blockbuster musical’s Maria discovers love, family and marriage, Thunder’s Elisabeth (Lilith Grasmug) discovers something decidedly earthier.
Set in a conservative village around the turn of the last century, the tale begins with a series of images showing the difficult lives of its inhabitants, particularly its girls and women. The montage ends with a disturbing shot of a young woman chained to the kitchen where she’s working.
The scene then switches to a distant nunnery, where 17-year-old Elisabeth is told she must return to her family because Innocente, her older sister and best friend, has died. The girl has to be carried out forcefully, apparently because she has no desire to leave the safety of religious life. Even as she trudges through mountainous terrain toward home, Elisabeth asks God to hide the secrets of the world from her because she wants no part of it.
Yet as soon as she returns to the family she hasn’t seen in years, Elisabeth begins trying to uncover the secret that’s been haunting her: What happened to Innocente? Her curiosity only grows when her mother (Sabine Timoteo) refuses to discuss the matter, and when a passing villager charges that her late sibling was a deviate who would have sex with anyone, including the devil.
Answers finally begin to appear when Elisabeth finds a diary in which Innocente describes in graphic detail her discovery of a part of life that is repressed in their rigidly religious society—sex. Intriguingly for the spiritually minded Elisabeth, Innocente writes that the discovery makes her feel closer, not farther, from God.
Will Elisabeth follow in her late sister’s dangerous path? Her parents fear that she will, especially after she befriends three young men who fell under the sexually adventurous Innocente’s influence.
Despite dealing with physical passion and such serious subjects as repression and misogyny, Thunder’s style is quiet and meditative. Cinematographer Marine Atlan’s images of the Alpine landscape and composer Nicolas Rabacus’s score complement each other in their calm beauty.
Leading the cast, Grasmug projects understated strength and determination as Elisabeth. Behind her, the supporting cast is uniformly convincing.
Despite the film’s strengths, some viewers may have reservations, feeling that writer-director Jaquier stacks the deck in her depiction of a mini-sexual rebellion in turn-of-the-century Switzerland.
Would teenagers really be able to handle the type of shared intimacy being shown without jealousy or hurt ever arising? And while the adults’ disapproval seems to be motivated solely by their religion, wouldn’t any modern parent be just as concerned, if for different reasons?
But Jaquier doesn’t address such questions, being focused solely on the age-old battle between repression and freedom, particularly as it relates to girls and women. And she depicts that struggle beautifully in a film whose subdued style in no way diminishes the strength of its convictions.
Rating: 3½ stars (out of 5)
Thunder (no MPAA rating) opened Oct. 25 in New York City, with a national rollout set to follow.
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