Vinyan (2008)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jeanne Bellmer	Emmanuel Béart	½
Paul Bellmer	Rufus Sewell
Thaksin Gao	Petch Osathanugrah
Kim	Julie Dreyfus

Review

Having lost their son in Thailand during the 2004 tsunami, a European couple has now convinced themselves they’ve seen the boy on a news clip from Burma’s jungle, and the two pay up to let local mobsters escort them into the wilderness. Vinyan is a slow-moving, tedious experience in which director Fabrice Du Welz insists that you feel his protagonists pain, using abundances of sound effects and visual trickery in order to achieve his goal. Arguably inspired by films such as Gaspar Noë’s Irreversible, Vinyan is far too circumstantial and speculative to be effective, and once the now deranged Béart and Sewell find themselves in the heart of jungle madness, Du Welz is more bent on realizing his controversial (albeit effective) final shot than giving an explanation to his pessimistic, otherworldly sociological comment.