Rodolphe Bouquet’s atmospheric, chilling short horror, The Last Snow (La Dernière Neige), playing at BFI London Film Festival, is a masterclass in using light, colour, and shadow to create nail-biting moments of terror.
How do you maintain ski slopes when climate change is rapidly melting the snow? Many resorts have turned to scooping up large quantities of snow from nearby mountain peaks before dropping it on their slopes by helicopter so people can keep skiing. It’s the kind of twisted human logic we see so often as we humans attempt to navigate a changing world we have collectively ushered in.
Rather than focusing on the problem, climate change, we focus on further plundering the resources we are now missing. But what if removing the snow from a nearby mountain awoke a mysterious beast that relied on it for its very survival? That’s the premise of Rodolphe Bouquet’s chilling short horror, The Last Snow (La Dernière Neige), as a ski resort becomes a feeding ground for an unseen beast determined to rid its mountain of human invaders.
As Guillaume (Guillaume Pottier) searches the resort for his two missing friends, he boards a ski lift with Isabelle (Dinara Drukarova). Isabelle, a ski resort regular, is there to watch the colourful annual parade of ski instructors as they descend the slopes with flares and lights. She knows the ski lift will temporarily stop when the night’s celebrations begin, and that dangling in the air over the crisp white snow offers the best viewing point. However, she also hates ski lifts- who doesn’t- and aims to keep the bar locking them in as fixed and close as possible. Guillaume, however, is far more interested in finding his friends than watching the light show about to start.
What neither of them knows is that an ancient and angry beast is about to awaken, a beast that has had enough of the human interlopers stealing its snow. They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and the beast is about to deliver its chilling revenge in spades as it picks off each ski instructor in the colourful procession before turning its gaze to the ski lift where Isabelle and Guillaume are seated.
Rodolphe Bouquet’s atmospheric and chilling short horror isn’t just a masterclass in the use of light, colour and shadow to create nail-biting moments of terror; it’s also a powerful exploration of the price we pay when we ignore the importance of maintaining natural wildernesses in favour of our selfish desire to use the earth’s resources until there are no more. We never see the beast, only hearing its growls and fury as it rips through the skiers and exacts its revenge, ending with a cliffhanger that leaves us wanting more as the freshly stolen snow turns red.
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