Fred Keleman’s obscure 1997 feature Frost is a gruelling yet thoroughly
engrossing experience. A nihilistic world of domestic violence, sexual
degradation and ruptured innocence channelled through muted colours and
meditative long-takes. Whilst watching the film I felt that this simple, though
intricately layered tale of a mother and son’s listless journey across a wintry
German landscape cleverly plays with ones notion of the real and the unreal. In doing so, Keleman delves into the
undefined space where reality and fiction collide.
When referring to cinema Hitchcock famously
said, “drama is life with the dull bits cut out”.
Like his Hungarian acolyte,
Bela Tarr (The Man From London and The Turin Horse), Keleman displays a
radical rejection of this dictum. The reality of Frost resides in Keleman’s observation of quotidian lives wrapped
in the fictitious foil of the plot. This emphasis on the mundane everyday seems
to regard plot as having secondary importance. For example, after arriving at
the hotel, greeted by a sombre, bearded receptionist, Micha and his mother,
Marianne, move out of the frame. Without warning, our focus is shifted to the
taciturn receptionist as we observe him lying down to smoke a cigarette. In a
way, this inexplicable scene may mirror the main characters’ search for relief,
being compared to that of the respite granted by the musky taste of tobacco. On
the flipside, it may merely be read as a moment removed from the narrative,
leaving the spectator to ponder the deep-seated problems of anonymous
characters.
