A writer of crime novels goes to Mouthe on the Franco-Swiss border in mid-winter for the reading of an aunt's will to find that his inheritance is a stuffed dog which he leaves in a roadside dump. Checking in to a local hotel, he becomes intrigued by the recent death of a local beauty who was the weather girl on the local TV. Her body had been discovered in a patch of
land neither Swiss nor French, a 'No-Man's Land'. The film alternates between his seking answers and the girl's life in flashback which shows that she thought she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe. Definite parallels exist from her beauty queen days to her becoming the mistress of the region's leading politician, this culminating in her singing 'Happy Birthday' to him at a local award ceremony with a deliberate dress malfunction as the climax. The politician drops her but she threatens to cause a scandal which leads to her death. Although serious, there is a light comedic touch to much of the
action which does end up with the writer, who had been suffering from a block, telling her story with success. The snow-bound surroundings are well photographed but the tenor of the film means it should not really be compared with the other
winter thriller of recent years, 'Fargo'.
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