Three Peaks

From Germany, the deeply disturbing domestic tragedy Three Peaks is another film of understated but driving intensity starring Alexander Fehling, a.k.a. the Paul Newman of German cinema.

This is a powerful and beautifully shot film of love and survival.

Three Peaks has a placid surface, but Zabeil uses abstraction — with edits that elide information or play tricks with spatial perception — to deepen a trite scenario.

Three Peaks is not a devastating film like “Force Majeure” — another mountain-set foreign film about the exposure of fissures in a family dynamic — but it is a satisfying one. There’s just enough closure to its inconclusive climax to allow you to relax, even if it doesn’t give you much to terribly ponder during the drive home.

This is a demanding and fitfully rewarding film which focuses minutely on the shifting relationships between its three protagonists.

Three Peaks is a dark little family drama, a ticking time bomb of a movie that is well made but never totally satisfies.

If Zabeil didn’t want to deliver a formula picture, he needed to come up with something better than the formula.