Directed by Peter Strickland

Transylvania, the ‘land across the forest', half Hungarian and half Romanian, full of flower meadows, flowing rivers, hidden villages, wild music, hanging mist, firelit darknesses and deep woods whose glades might hold horrors, is an area which still seems to embody our European myths and archetypal fantasies. It's the perfect setting for Peter Strickland's tale of hidden outrage and doomed revenge. Made on location there without benefit of external funding (Strickland used a legacy to make the film, for only €35,000) it's a stunning debut feature.

Images of idyllic rural tranquillity are shattered when Katalin (Hilda Peter) leaves her village with her 9 year old son after the story gets out that her husband is not his real father. Travelling by horse and cart (the first real indication that this is not a period piece is the somewhat surprising use well into the film of a mobile phone), her dark intentions become clear as the film progresses. Her face is forever fascinating to watch, intelligent, determined, controlled, the archetypal wronged woman whom we simultaneously sympathise with and fear. For much of the time there is little dialogue, but an amazing soundtrack of natural sounds, unearthly contemporary music, not always being clear which of the two it is. Folk songs also play their part, as do silences fraught with emotion. When we fully hear Katalin tell the detail of what it was that happened to her it is via a long monologue, in a rowing boat, camera fixed on her face with the swirling river behind. The landscape, as in the novels of Hardy, which this story resembles in its tragic doomfulness, is sometimes sympathetic, often cruelly ironic, as when a character runs through a sunlit meadow full of flowers to the horrible discovery he and we know he must make. As always in these old stories, retribution is inevitable, understandable, but causing more injustice and tragedy, as the ripples from it fan out into innocent lives. Beautiful and horrible images and sounds create a tale that is human and poetic, modern and timeless, but never portentous or over-symbolic, whose mood lingers with you afterwards.

Seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 10 October 2009