Swiss Alps: a very elegant resort is home to a wide variety of guests.

Arab women, Hollywood actors, aphasic couples, Buddhist monks, obese ex-footballers with oxygen-carrying wives, masseuses, unlikely prostitutes and Miss Universe on a prize trip.

Mick is an 80-year-old filmmaker afflicted with prostate disease and does not hesitate to make his "testament" film.

Fred, a peer, is a famous composer and conductor who will not give in to any flattery, much less the most unrewarding one.

The children of both represent their vantage point on the world and what they have been.

The past seems far away the future too close.

They are very close and longtime friends and are on vacation; they take long walks and confront each other about very little other than the outcomes of urinary retention, comments about each other's children, and goliardic bets.

Fred's narcissism undergoes a severe attack in the form of a monologue by his daughter, leaving him, who does not know how to love, in utter apparent indifference.

Family, couple, success, sex; much livor-filled irony highlights the prejudice about female beauty, while male power sits back.

Bodies speak and music plays regrets, removed remorse, selfishness and gender stereotypes.

Fragments of an existential discourse accompany a residue of life that mocks monarchy, declares emotions overrated, affirms the perversion of levity and decrees a passion for fiction.

All punctuated by the mournful human presence of Claude Debussy's prelude "des pas sur la neige"; nothing could have been more effective in a mountain landscape that despite the absence of snow and the presence of luxury, manages to inexorably cadence the metronome of existence.

"Music is not to be understood," Fred says, "it happens," as life happens.

27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice