We are introduced to a vast wintry landscape below through the helicopter windshield. A young woman (Katerina Golubeva) is dropped off in the remote village where its inhabitants seem like the Eskimos in the far north. She shares a smoke with an old reindeer herder. There is a bit of magic realism with the bedroom overgrown with vegetation. But the welcome is short lived. At the gathering of the villagers at night, Kat watches their drunkenness in silence from one corner of the room. She sticks out like a sore thumb, since she is taller than everyone around her. Did she come to the place looking for acceptance or solace? After a knife fight with a couple of drunken local men, she flees the village on foot. No one helps her. Some even pretend not to notice her struggle.
Few of Us is no anthropological survey or gooey, touch-y feel-y travelogue where everyone gets along. It's a cold, unforgiving world for the Bartas' outsiders. Their loneliness is accentuated here with breathtaking scenery and the village's physical remoteness. The film is gorgeous as usual. Bartas holds the static shots for good 2-3 minutes, so they can come alive before your eyes . Again, his no dialog approach fits much better here with the isolation and sadness of the characters than other interloper films like Varda's Vagabond (which I love very much but now obviously not as much as this). I loved it. It surely becomes one of my favorites of all time!
