The new trailer for Russian-born, Colorado-raised writer/director Julia Loktev's eerie travel tale The Loneliest Planet has just been released.  The film, which was well-received at festivals last year, stars art-house veteran Gael Garcia Bernal as well as Hani Furstenberg as an engaged couple who spend a summer backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.  Of course, the couple's idyllic trip is marred by "an incident" that threatens to change the course of their relationship and much of what they know (it's probably not intestinal in nature, but I think we've all been there).

The film covers surprisingly well-worn ground: loosely inspired by Ernest Hemingway's 1936 short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, (going on level deeper, Inception-style: the short-story was inspired by an actual incident in pre-World War II Africa), the tale is a framework for Loktev's film along with another short-story based on the same material by Tim Bissell called Expensive Trips Nowhere. (Hemingway's story was also turned into a 1947 film starring Gregory PeckThe Macomber Affair). Hit the jump for more on this new take on the material as well as the trailer.

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The film's title is indeed a play on the Lonely Planet travel guides, as the main couple appear to be just the kind of adventurers most interested in the guide series.  The trailer gives an eerie feeling of things falling apart for Bernal and Furstenberg's characters, but without exactly addressing what the fear itself may be (for the best).  But if all else fails, it looks like there will be plenty of heavy petting and sex scenes.

Here's the complete synopsis for the film:

Alex (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg) are young, in love and engaged to be married. The summer before their wedding, they are backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. The couple hire a local guide to lead them on a camping trek, and the three set off into a stunning wilderness, a landscape that is both overwhelmingly open and frighteningly closed. Walking for hours, they trade anecdotes, play games to pass the time of moving through space. And then, a momentary misstep, a gesture that takes only two or three seconds, a gesture that's over almost as soon as it begins. But once it is done, it can't be undone. Once it is done, it threatens to undo everything the couple believed about each other and about themselves.

The Loneliest Planet will be in theaters October 26th.