Couple In A Hole

2015

1 hr. 45 min.

Drama

Mystery & Thriller

List

100%

17 Reviews

Tomatometer

36%

100+ Ratings

Audience Score

A British couple live like savages inside of a hole in the middle of the French Pyrenees.

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Audience Member

Beautifully filmed this slightly odd film is confusing at first but develops well with a good storyline. In my opinion a must watch!

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

Audience Member

http://www.shanemarais.net/movies-ive-seen/movies-ive-seen-c/couple-hole-2015/

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/17/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Very absorbing, if slightly overlong. It's a very extreme situation shot in close up detail. The story unfolds nicely, becoming ever more comprehensible. Painful and just plausible.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Given the beauty of the wooded valleys where it was shot, this is often a bleak representation of a couple's life choice. The cause and effect of why they are choosing to live like this is made clear sooner rather than later, and it certainly helps the film.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

COUPLE IN A HOLE does introduce us in its opening to the lives of a Scottish couple who literally inhabits a hole in the forest, putting us in their structured routines where we see the man goes about his daily duties combing the greens of French Pyrenees, hunting and foraging for food, while the wife spends her entire day in their cave taking care of the "house" chores. The mood established in the first frames may even move in an almost documentary trope, but director Tom Geens does not wait too long before he weaves his story into a theme that is slow burning and visual-centric. Whilst we get glimpses of their feral lifestyle including skinning and roasting their own dinners, even eating of worms, displayed in a visual medium that is sparse on dialogue, we will learn that the anchor of the story is in fact isolation and grief. Geens manages to showcase the intensity of his film through a haunting tone as we slowly discover how much the wife, Karen (Kate Dickie) is struggling with reality, while her husband, John (Paul Higgins) patiently cajoles and comforts her. Mourning in desolation has been explored many a times in films, and in this second feature of the Belgian director he's bringing the theme in a manner that is more indie and art house. Both leads manage their roles competently, as they embody the grieving couple in a way that is painful to digest, to a point where Karen's frail physicality starts to turn her into a hunch-back creature-like being (ravaged from her condition of not even able to bring herself to leave the hole), yet somehow relatable in every way we feel for parents who've lost their child. In a quintessential moment where John finally succeeds to coax his emotionally bruised wife out of the hole to enjoy the rain in the open, marking an important progress of their bereaved journey, a minor accident takes place which triggers a series of incidents which will threaten their domestic landscape which was supposedly structured to help them carry on existing. The lives of another couple, a friendly local from the nearby town, Andre (Je?ro?me Kircher) and his wife (Corinne Masiero), are thrown off the equilibrium as their fate eventually entwines with our titular couple in a tragic way. Not everyone's cup of tea, in its own languid pace the film's emotional undercurrent may not touch certain audience. Personally I found it moving to witness how welded and interdependent John and Karen are emotionally, to a point they can no longer endure as a single entity without one another. Their on-screen chemistry is rather numbing to watch, in a good way, you'd be taken into their retreated lives so devoid of modernity and ability to even feel, you might almost feel that you're habitually connected to the forest as well.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/03/23

Full Review

Audience Member

For me this didn't live up to the hype. A disturbing undertone and two compelling performances from Higgins and Dickie ensures that you stick with it

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/20/23

Full Review

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Tom Geens

Director

Paul Higgins

John

Kate Dickie

Karen

Jérôme Kircher

Andre

Corinne Masiero

Celine

Tom Geens

Writer

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Jonathan Romney

Observer (UK)

This strange film is a ruralist cross between British psychological realism and the wilder, Artaud-inflected fringes of French art cinema.

Rated: 3/5

Apr 10, 2016

Full Review

Tara Brady

Irish Times

Even a weird curveball coda can't undo the good work done by the filmmaker and a very fine quartet of thespians.

Rated: 4/5

Apr 8, 2016

Full Review

Kate Muir

Times (UK)

A peculiar and gripping study of parental grief.

Rated: 4/5

Apr 7, 2016

Full Review

Rachel Brook

One Room With A View

After a slow build, Couple In A Hole develops from brooding drama to frenetic thriller.

Rated: 3/5

Apr 19, 2019

Full Review

Alison Rowat

The Herald (Scotland)

All concerned tell the story with impressive restraint, and the performances from Dickie and Higgins are outstanding, making us believe in this story and these characters.

Rated: 4/5

Aug 23, 2018

Full Review

Philip Kemp

Total Film

Geens' first English-language feature builds slowly, piling up underlying darkness, hinting that further tragedy can't be far off.

Rated: 4/5

Jan 2, 2017

Full Review

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Synopsis

A British couple live like savages inside of a hole in the middle of the French Pyrenees.

Director: Tom Geens
Executive Producer: Lizzie Francke
Screenwriter: Tom Geens
Production Co: 011 Productions, Les Enragés, A Private View
Genre: Drama, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: English (United Kingdom)