Fred Hechinger in Tender Andrew Haigh Drama

The many ways in which writer-director Andrew Haigh and fiction author Colm Tóibín share a kinship of sensibilities, notably in their impeccable gifts for intimate character observation, breathe warming embers into the sub-zero elemental severity of A Long Winter. A coming-of-age drama that touches delicately on grief and resilience, family and home, queer sexuality and liberating self-discovery, the film’s muted tone will be considered under-powered by some. But audiences willing to tune in to its slow-burn introspection and immersive sense of place will find a humanity that is its own reward, particularly in the probing performances of Fred Hechinger, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai.

Just as Haigh transposed the Japanese source novel from Tokyo to London in his 2023 stunner, All of Us Strangers, his adaptation of Tóibín’s novella — first published in the Irish author’s haunting 2006 short story collection Mothers and Sons before being issued as a standalone volume last year — relocates from the Spanish Pyrenees to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. That landscape, magnificent but forbidding as fall lapses into the protracted, snowbound season that gives the film its title, helps make the material Haigh’s own, like a lost literary nugget of 1950s Americana.

The central character and the eyes and ears of the story is Mike (Hechinger), who took a test run at life on a farm two state lines away from his family’s cabin high in the mountains but was soon pulled back by homesickness. Mike is resistant to change, but for his younger brother Tommy (Kit Connor), it can’t come quickly enough. Impatient to see more of the world, he has enlisted in the Army and soon ships out to Korea, leaving the other bed empty in the room the brothers had shared since childhood.

Change turns out to be beyond Mike’s control when he realizes that his depressed mother, Louise (Caitríona Balfe), is drinking heavily, increasingly chafing at the life of isolation her husband Lester (Moss-Bachrach) has chosen for them. Desperate for a connection to a more sophisticated world and its people, Louise entrusts Mikey to slip copies of Cosmopolitan among the provisions they pick up on trips to the fading foothills township. She knows Lester would disapprove of her spending what little money they have on frivolous pleasures.

When Lester, whose father and grandfather both drank themselves to death, starts smelling booze on Louise’s breath again, he enrages her by tipping her secret stash of gut-rot wine down the sink. Unsettled to see his mother suffering, Mike urges his dad to give her what she needs, but Lester insists on her going cold-turkey, causing her to howl in anguish. While Lester and Mikey are out fixing the barn door before the season’s first big storm, Louise vanishes, taking her winter coat and boots with her.

As the snow closes in and the phone lines and power go down, local residents and state troopers form a search party, trudging as far as they can go each day on the surrounding mountain range. Louise’s brother Jack (Martin Freeman), who lives on the other side of the mountain, has heard nothing from his sister. Family friend Joe (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), who has started talking to prickly Lester again after a period of chilly silence, tells Mikey to look out for vultures circling overhead, usually a sure sign of a body in the snow.

Haigh expertly balances the tone as dread turns to lacerating sorrow. But even as Mike faces the void of his mother’s absence in uncomfortable isolation with his disgruntled dad, his eyes can’t help locking with those of a young cop (Anthony Timpano) involved in the search, in what is instantly recognizable as unspoken sexual tension.

While queer characters and themes run through the work of both Haigh and Tóibín, A Long Winter never takes the expected turns, although Mikey does have homoerotic fantasies about the cop in Tommy’s bed. Gay yearning is embedded in who he is, played with a touching cherubic innocence alongside a more adult longing by the reliably excellent Hechinger.

When Mike insists on going out alone to continue the search each day, long after his dad has abandoned hope, the rigidly patriarchal Lester grumbles about there being no one to tend to the cooking and housework. When he hires mixed-race orphan Jimmy (Woon-A-Tai, one of the revelations of Reservation Dogs) as a live-in domestic to handle those responsibilities, Mikey’s desire shifts focus. 

Whether or not it’s reciprocated is kept ambiguous by both Haigh and Woon-A-Tai. But after intially treating Jimmy dismissively and resenting the stranger’s presence in Tommy’s bed, Mike comes to his defense when Lester obnoxiously mocks the housekeeper one night for doing women’s work. While Jimmy can stand up for himself, the gesture of solidarity sparks a thaw between him and Mike. They start going out together each day to search, walking farther afield each time and pissing off Lester.

Mikey’s gayness is very much a part of the character’s DNA, but it’s not the dominant thread of Haigh’s film. The writer-director is more attentive to the tectonic shifts in a family when the balance is upset, and the way that crushing loss can sometimes be a path to personal growth. Through his friendship with the quiet, soulful Jimmy, who has led a tough life, Mike gains the confidence to assert his place in the household, to deepen his sense of belonging in their lonely corner of the world, and to speak blunt truths to his father. 

The remote cabin he built was always Lester’s dream, never Louise’s. Even when Mike gains a deeper understanding of his mother and learns the reason that his father and their neighbor down the road, Ben (David Furr), detest each other, it appears that he will continue to hold his dad accountable.

As always with Haigh, the entire ensemble is strong, led by Hechinger with raw pain, burgeoning maturity and innate sweetness. Moss-Bachrach deftly finds the softer sides of Lester, even at his most unreasonable, indicating that world-weary sadness eats away at him even if he has trouble showing it. 

Connor is appealing in the smallest role; Balfe leaves an indelible mark, giving Louise an addict’s cunning but also the gnawing frustration of a woman stuck in a life she didn’t want; and Woon-A-Tai brings a restorative calm — never at risk of becoming a noble old-school Sundance cliché.

The film looks beautiful, its enveloping crystalline images gracefully shot on 35mm by DP André Turpin on location in the Canadian Rockies (cheaper than Colorado). Production designer Emmanuel Fréchette’s rustic, built-from-scratch cabin, complete with interiors and windows looking out onto the vast expanse of unforgiving nature, gives the movie a fully lived-in feel. And erstwhile Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger’s pensive score echoes the gentle rhythms of Jonathan Alberts’ editing.

A Long Winter is not an emotional stealth bomb like All of Us Strangers or even Haigh’s 2011 breakthrough Weekend — it’s arguably closest in spirit to another of the Brit director’s American-set dramas, the under-appreciated but lovely Lean on Pete — but the new film’s subdued intensity and aching sensitivity make it lingeringly affecting.