Review of Beyond the Hills (2012) by Augustine H — 01 May 2016

This is a Romanian film about a girl who reunites with a former lover who has now become a nun. Unfortunately, this girl has some significant trouble accepting her friend's new holy lifestyle and struggles with how to be with the woman she loves without wanting to live the life of a nun for herself.

There's a lot of ambiguity in this story that is never explained for the audience. We are left to judge for ourselves if the priest and nuns behave inappropriately, if the young woman has a mental illness of some kind, or even if she is actually possessed.

As far as I'm concerned...I don't care. The movie moved back and forth between 2 things I hate watching on film. Half the time it was really slow and extraordinarily boring. Every person spends most of the movie talking in very hushed tones, there is basically no music in the film, it's loaded with dead air.

In fact, it took me multiple days to finish this movie because I kept falling asleep while watching. The times when the movie wasn't boring, it was annoying. I constantly wanted to slap some sense into the characters, and was frustrated by their stupid decisions.

I can see some of the intriguing elements of Beyond the Hills and why it might fascinate more "cultured" movie-goers. But my big, dumb brain just didn't care.