The Skin of the Wolf (2018)

A trapper lives alone in an abandoned town high in the mountains. We don't get any backstory about why the town is empty nor how he came to be there. He gets paid per wolf pelt by the nearest inhabited town for keeping it safe from the predators. When it's suggested that he get married to relieve the loneliness, he agrees and pays a local businessman for his eldest daughter. Though they seem to be making a go of things, it's eventually disclosed that she's pregnant with another man's child and sickly. When the trapper angrily returns her body to the businessman, demanding repayment for the deceit, the businessman offers up his younger daughter. She is not nearly as companionable as her sister was.

The mood here is fantastic. You feel the solitude and the way that the wilderness can feel like a prison, especially without any let-up from the constant drudgery and lack of empathy from one's partner. But it wound up feeling so unnecessarily empty. Could they have "made it" if she'd been encouraged to attempt a true partnership? If she (or anyone) had helped him with social niceties and taught him how to be compassionate, could things have turned out better? I think that the fact that she had a "way out" provided by her father, she never really considered trying to make it work, but instead had the mindset that if it didn't get better on its own, she'd just make it stop.

Trigger warning for those with misophonia: mute any scene in which this guy is eating.

C+