30/08/2008

The international premiere of Vinyan [+see also:
trailer
film profile] screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. The second feature by Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz (after the successful The Ordeal [+see also:
trailer
interview: Fabrice du Welz
film profile]) plunges its two protagonists – a married Anglo-French couple – into a nightmarish Southeast Asia.

Jeanne and Paul are no strangers to tragedy: a few months previously they lost their only child, who was swallowed up by the 2005 tsunami, never to be found. The mother, however (played by a spirited Emmanuelle Béart, who here at the press conference on the Lido was mistaken for her colleague Juliette Binoche by a distracted journalist), continues to believe he is alive and swears she recognised him in a commercial made for humanitarian purposes in inaccessible Burma.

Relatives of the real-life victims have not welcomed the film: they complain that the wounds of the tragedy are still too raw for them to become the subject of a tropical horror film. But the film – which also stars UK actor Rufus Sewell – is not (merely) a gratuitous look at nature’s massacre: keeping a certain distance from the splatter movie, Du Welz pays homage to “the paranoid atmosphere of so many films of the 1970s”, and at the same time revises the traditional themes of middle-class drama, such as feelings of guilt and the pain of sudden bereavement. We shouldn’t reveal any more, so as not to give away too many of the story’s twists.

From the credits in block capitals to the cinematography by Benoît Debie (who enhances the sweeping, rainy landscapes using cinemascope), numerous technical-artistic devices make up for the weaknesses of the screenplay, which isn’t always lucid.

Shot in English with an eye on the international market, Vinyan is a French/UK/Belgian co-production headed by Michael Gentile. Other partners include The Film, Film4, Pilchard Productions, K2, One Eyed, RTBF and BeTV, in association with Coficup, Backup Films, Arte Cofinova 3 and Motion Investment Group.

International sales are being handled by Wild Bunch, who, after the Venice screening, will be hoping for success among buyers at the Toronto Film Festival (where the film will be presented in the coming days). The title is set to be launched in France by Wild Bunch Distribution on October 1.

Watch here the interview with Du Welz.

(Translated from Italian)