This is a moody, beautifully shot drama of a family, isolated in their mountaintop home "far from the madding crowd," as the director has put it, and from a lot else, as well. The film, with its Alpine setting, has a kind of fairy-tale quality to it, though it is definitely a fairy tale for adults. Here are people whose bond with nature is far stronger than their bond with other people. How this type of living affects succeeding generations is the subject of the story, which is a coming-of-age tale centering on the young son and teenage daughter who are doubly isolated: he is deaf and unable to talk, she is kept home from school as his tutor. When sexual impulses arise, they become a part of the sibling relationship in a way that shocks the children's parents, but not the film's director. He has said, "I am interested in that old theme (incest) in a mythological sense, but not in a social sense. The theme of the film is love-natural love between sister and brother. It is an allegory."