Vinyan

Think ‘Antichrist’ without the, er, clit snip and you’re half way to ‘Vinyan’. It’s a menacing pseudo-horror thriller with arty aspirations in which an expat couple (Emmanuelle Béart and Rufus Sewell, of all people) in Thailand journey into the heart of darkness (Burma) in the hope of finding their son lost in the 2006 tsunami. Technically, the film pushes the right buttons, with special mention to Benoît Debie’s aggressive cinematography (harking back to his work on ‘Irréversible’) which wrings tension from images such as the pair sailing through eerie waters. Kudos, too, to Béart, whose turn supplies a dose of credibility to a tale that not only gets less compelling and plausible as it goes on, but becomes side-tracked by odd musings on motherhood and death. The finale feels like a cop out.