Whitewash

Bruce is a snowplow driver in a remote Quebec town who faces a fateful night when, after a drunken drive through a fierce snowstorm, he strikes a pedestrian and panics. He hides the body in a snowbank and, in a daze, powers on into the woods, eventually becoming stuck in the cold with no supplies. What begins as a desperate bid to survive becomes a slow immersion into guilt and fear as he tries to figure out what to do next. He abandons any early idea of seeking help, choosing instead to stay near his abandoned snowplow and confront the mounting emotion of his own actions. He rehearses his police statement aloud to himself, and the imagined conversations grow more charged as he is forced to face the possibility that his victim had children.

As the present-day crunch of his situation tightens, Bruce drifts into flashbacks that peel back the layers of what happened before this deadly night. He and the dead man, Paul, were houseguests, and their uneasy relationship spiraled after Paul was discovered attempting to commit suicide by inhaling car exhaust. In those moments, Bruce finds himself drawn into Paul’s world, admiring his vehicle and sharing casual moments that gradually reveal friction and dependence. Paul asks for a loan and pushes for a deeper connection, even as Bruce explains that he cannot help him. Bruce lives with memories of his wife and his job loss, a life turned upside down after a drunken accident with his snowplow that cost him his livelihood. Paul notices Bruce’s collection of highly realistic ocular prostheses, uses his own claimed web-design skills to propose setting up an online storefront for the collection, and then, in a tense moment, Bruce rejects the idea of selling what connects him to his late wife.

Back in the present, Bruce’s search for basic shelter and fuel leads him to a restaurant where he discovers, through a newspaper, that both he and Paul have been reported missing. He stockpiles supplies, returns to the snowplow, and then, when his safeguard runs thin, ventures deeper into the woods to explore a sprawling house by a frozen lake. He breaks into a shed to steal tools and provisions, only to be confronted by the homeowners when they come home. The daughter, Simone, finds him; the moment unsettles them both, and he apologizes to her father, Eric, before slipping away again into the trees. The tension escalates as Bruce injures his ankle during his retreat, forcing him to endure hours of numbness and suffering while he hides on Eric’s land and constructs more imaginary dialogues with the police.

The story peels back more layers through further flashbacks: Bruce had once caught Paul stealing, and pursuing him in the snowplow led to a deadly moment where Paul seems to smile as he is struck. This fuels Bruce’s growing sense that the vehicle itself bears responsibility in the tragedy, and he becomes increasingly hostile toward the machine he once trusted. In a dramatic surge of fear and anger, he douses the snowplow with gasoline and sets it alight, attempting to sever himself from the accident and its aftermath.

With his ankle healed enough to move again, Bruce steals a snowmobile and digs up Paul’s body, discarding it in a frozen lake. He’s caught in the act, witnesses scatter, and he hurries back to his own home where paranoia tightens its grip. He believes two men are converging on him—whether police or accomplices of Eric—and he tries to hide by banging his boot against the snowplow to attract attention, but the threat passes. His skills with machinery are limited, and his body grows weaker as starvation and boredom hollow out the days. The winter drifts toward a temporary ease as the cold recedes briefly, only to snap back with renewed ferocity.

In the film’s quiet epilogue, Bruce’s inner voice returns, offering stark, starkly moral observations about guilt and endurance. The closing reflections crystallize into two lines that linger beyond the image of snow and ice:

every guilty person is his own hangman

…and each new day will be better

Goddamn, it’s freezing.

The story remains focused on a man’s struggle to reconcile a life-altering mistake with the harsh indifference of nature and the anxious scrutiny of a world that won’t easily forget. The atmosphere stays taut and restrained, balancing bleak realism with existential introspection, and leaving readers with a lingering sense of isolation, consequence, and the uncertain possibility of forgiveness.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:21