If you ever wondered what would happen if you took the DNA of a classic tragedy and stirred it up in a bucket of mid-century French existentialism and Scandinavian folklore, you’d get André Michel’s The Blonde Witch. It’s a film that feels less like a traditional narrative and more like a haunting B-side on a psychedelic folk record. It’s ethereal, earthy and destined to end in a feedback loop of misery.

Drone on, Blonde Witch.

Our protagonist is Brulard (Maurice Ronet), a French civil engineer who arrives in the Swedish backcountry to teach the locals how to chop down trees more efficiently. He’s the embodiment of civilization with a capital C: he’s got the blueprints, the logic and the smugness that only a man in a crisp dress shirt can bring to a primeval forest.

Then he meets Ina (Marina Vlady, The Conjugal Bed). She lives in the woods with her grandmother, talks to animals and possesses a wild, barefoot energy. Vlady plays her with a luminous, otherworldly intensity that makes it entirely believable that a man would throw away his career and his common sense to follow her into the brush. I get it, man.

The central conflict here isn’t just boy meets girl.

It’s industry meets magic.

Brulard falls hard, but because he’s a man of the modern world, he can’t just love Ina for the forest spirit she is. He has to fix her. He wants to scrub the dirt off her feet, put her in a dress, and drag her into the 20th century. It’s the ultimate colonialist romantic move: I love you, now let me destroy everything that makes you unique.

As their affair heats up, the local villagers start sharpening their pitchforks. These aren’t your friendly neighborhood Swedes. They’re a superstitious, insular mob who view Ina as a literal witch. The tension hums like a low-frequency bass note throughout the second act, building a dread that you can feel in your teeth.

Without spoiling the gut-punch, let’s just say that Brulard’s attempt to “civilize” Ina goes about as well as you’d expect. His insistence on bringing her into the village leads to a collision between ancient fear and modern arrogance, and Ina pays the ultimate price.

The ending isn’t just sad. It’s heavy like the sound of a beautiful melody being cut short by a broken string. Brulard is left with his blueprints and his civilization, but the soul of the forest nd the woman he claimed to love is gone, extinguished by the very world he tried to force her into.

I’m shocked this hasn’t shown up on an All the Haunts Be Ours set yet.

You can watch this on Cultpix.