I knew I was going to love this film when the opening scene was a mushroom hunt!
It all begins, when a man, trying to escape the city, heads off to work on a farm in a remote area of the Swiss Alps.
He boards with two shepherds- aging man and his mute nephew.
And as they start to get acclimated with one another, the older man shows the city boy his secret project- an absinthe distillery.
They start to get totally wasted on absinthe on a nightly basis. Until, one night, they decide they need a woman...and there's only way to do that. At least, so goes the old legend...
Three lonely shepherds use a broom, straw, and rags to make the woman of their dreams. And the devil takes pity on them, by bringing her to life. The three men use her to cook, clean, and for their own sexual pleasure...until she takes revenge on them by skinning them alive, and making dolls from their bodies.
The three men do successfully manage to conjure a Sennentuntschi. And the two older men, quickly start raping her...in increasingly violent fashion.
Until she snaps and kills all their goats...skinning them alive. Striking fear into the men's hearts.
And considering this film is non-linear in nature. We have a subsequent timeline playing out. Where we are following a police officer from the local village, as he investigates the discovery of a mute woman who wanders into town. He is trying to find out who she exactly is, and where she came from.
And this all culminates in one of the most confusing and convoluted endings I've EVER seen. There is so much sh*t going on at the end...timelines converging; assumptions being made; ruses playing out; and a(albeit foreshadowed) twist that gives the Belgians and French a run for their money...before another, final twist, that is a bit more cliché (but gets you thinking).
Even when it's all over with, you are still kind of confused because there is just way too much to take in, packed into a tiny timeframe...it's almost impossible to fully comprehend.
The whole part with the priest and girl having a daughter didn't make much sense to me at all...it totally comes out of the blue and smacks you in the face.
They should have just scrapped that part of the ending for the sake of flow and understandability.
But, even with these flaws, this film is pretty awesome! I would still recommend it, just be prepared to pay full attention at the end, or risk missing something and being confused as all f*ck.
7.5 out of 10.
