“The Line”: A Complex Family Drama of Betrayal and Dysfunction in the Swiss Mountains

Right at the beginning of this film something unheard of happens. Two women fight with each other, they don’t just wrestle and throw a vase against the wall, no, they attack each other like mad. That’s rare in the cinema, violence by and among women, but it will be decisive for »Die Linie«, the third feature film by Swiss director Ursula Meier.

The environment suits the rough family circumstances. In the midst of a winter-cold Swiss mountain scenery, which is more reminiscent of “Fargo” than Heidi’s idyll, Christina (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) throws her daughter Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) out of the house after the two had an argument. Why? The reasons unfold in 100 minutes and they tell of missed opportunities, pressure of expectations and a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship.

Margaret’s face and body are marked with scars and old wounds. A woman as stubborn as she is vulnerable, with an extremely short fuse. Stéphanie Blanchoud gives this character immense energy. Her striking face, the short hair, the delicate, fibrous, muscular figure, everything about her is noticeably electrified, but doesn’t appear brutal in any way. However, with every scene that accompanies the healing of the wounds, her face seems muddier, more scarred, more disfigured.

Where some flee into inner immigration with their feelings, fed by rejection and humiliation, perhaps seeking comfort and support in alcohol or other addictions, Margaret goes outside. Physicality is their way of communicating. And this woman really has absolutely no tolerance, her impulse control is non-existent, there are no filters between her and the world. At every confrontation, no matter how small, she screams, jumps on car hoods or throws objects through the air. Resilience research would despair of her.

Ursula Meier relies entirely on four strong female characters (in addition to mother and daughter, sister and half-sister). Hervé (Dali Benssalah), the mother’s new boyfriend, is only a catalyst for the tension that Christina and Margaret in particular are under.

After Margaret is ordered by a judge to be banned from contact with her family, with which she does not want to come to terms, she still shows up regularly in front of their house to give her little sister Marion (Elli Spagnolo) singing lessons. To protect Margaret, she paints a blue line a hundred meters around the house. The playing field in which this intense family story takes place is thus marked out.

When Margaret accompanies her half-sister on the guitar on a pile of rocks in front of the house, these are the only scenes in the film where she appears calm and balanced.

Gradually, director Ursula Meier reveals the reasons for Margaret’s anger, which mainly have to do with Christina. A mother who had to give up her life too soon for her eldest daughter, who had been a concert pianist with a great future. Then came Margaret and Christina traded Carnegie Hall for a drab room as a music school teacher. Christina, a woman who has never known how to withdraw, who, when she talks about the greatest love of her life, doesn’t mean her children, but the piano. Who finds her youngest daughter too fat for a pretty communion dress and not only thinks everything, but says it to her children’s faces, so that the guilt that their existence entails is clear to those who appear to be guilty. It couldn’t be more toxic and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi plays this mother with such a convincing coldness and self-centeredness that this character could not have been created more precisely by Elfriede Jelinek either.

But despite this manipulative family construction, it remains vague where Margaret’s physical violence originated. Her character is a hauntingly acted product of rejection and the desperate search for closeness and support, but where these rampant, uncontrolled outbursts come from remains unclear, which in the end makes the character of Margaret appear a whole lot more powerless than she does on screen should work.

“The line”. Switzerland, France, Belgium 2022. Director: Ursula Meier. With: Stéphanie Blanchoud, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Elli Spagnolo, India Hair. 100 minutes, running in cinemas.