A very special film indeed, but not because of its realism just like that. The protagonist of this movie is a mother of seven children, the father of whom is nothing but a plain asshole. He has another family and uses our one only for work on his farm, and gratification of his sexual needs. The misery is striking, not in the last place due to the depiction of the toil on the land.
Despair looms large.
Snow covers a period from summer until Christmas, and the course of the seasons are of major importance. True to the realistic style, director Sandrine Veysset filmed during the actual seasons and thus achieved a strikingly natural depiction of both weather and life on the farm. At the same time she attaches a symbolic meaning to the seasons. The motion from summer tot winter, from outside in, represents the mother's growing despair. On Christmas Eve, which the father spends with his other family, she decides to kill her children and herself.