 Three partially uniformed men in a car driving up a mountainous road. Having arrived at a parking place, they unload their heavy cases. They set off up a narrow mountain track between bushes and boulders. Ropes appear - a safety measure, and shortly thereafter the climb takes them into a dark, narrow and wet tunnel in a cliff. There, feeling their way forward and groaning they go up and down in a never-ending rocky gorge accompanied by the threatening sound of falling stones. It should be said that here the framework and conditions (which are difficult to make out), distort towards the grotesque. After this intended exaggeration they do manage to escape into the open air and events immediately take a conventional turn - the men arrive at a mountain lodge complex where they begin servicing a long-distance telephone box situated there. (Dabernig/Scherer) To some extent Dabernig / Scherer identify with one of their protagonists who, in spite of a physical handicap, does not allow anyone to help him on the steep climb which is, in addition, exceptional and, one could say, strangely old fashioned operation. But, just as this Post Office employee never loses his countenance as chauffeur or later as hiker, the film makers never slip into the trap of simple pleasantries. This is not a visual joke, although it always threatens to tip over and neither is it a culturally pessimistic contribution to current communications and globalisation traps. What is most arresting in Timau, as in the case of Dabernig s Wisla is the art of the moment. Normally the deeply private loneliness of the opening car journey would be at the end of a great melodrama (well, OK it could also be a small melodrama).