Manon Coubia’s “Forest High”

“Forest High,” screened last night as part of Lincoln Center’s New Directors series, is a three-part portrait of solitude (but not loneliness) that admires with extraordinary restraint the beauty of physical labor, the natural world, discovery, strangers who pass through our lives, and quietude. It now accompanies me, in my mind, like a good friend I can count on for wisdom. 

The film, partially scripted and part improvisation, follows three caretakers at a hut, or lodge, in the French Alps: a 20-something, 40-something, and 60-something. All women. They tend the hut alone, and we watch each season as they get dropped off at the hut, acquaint themselves with their temporary home, chop wood, make meals, gaze out the window, greet the hikers who’ll be bunking there, perform their toilette, and climb into their bed at night. Who are these women? We’re trusted to get to know them through their actions, though small details are provided. The young woman, a local, explains to a visitor that she travels from job to job to make ends meet. The older woman shares that she was married and had grown kids, and that one day she took a job on a boat trip—and then began accepting offers for similar work that brought her farther and farther from home. She left her previous life by chance and by choice, or the other way around. 

As the director, Manon Coubia, explained in the Q&A afterward, there was no crisis that led these women to working at this hut. In fact, there are no major events of any kind in this film. Nor is it designed to lead us to a foregone conclusion. “Forest High” isn’t about nature being superior to the urban world, or about endurance or stoicism. It’s refreshingly free of dogma. And yet it has a point of view. The stories are allowed to breathe, yet the film is rigorously structured. Afterward, I glided through Lincoln Center, which was abuzz from a performance that had just ended, and floated through the thicket of honking traffic. The chaos could not touch me.