Vinyan (DVD)
Steve Barton
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Reviewed by Uncle Creepy
Starring Rufus Sewell, Emmanuelle Beart, Rufus Sewell’s hypnotic floating eye, a bunch of filthy children
Directed by Fabrice du Welz
Distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Let me preface this review by saying that it took me nearly three sittings to finish Vinyan from acclaimed director Fabrice du Welz. Not because it was overly long. The film’s runtime is just over an hour and a half. The multiple viewing sessions were the result of absolute boredom. Vinyan is a lot of things, but attention grabbing certainly isn’t one of them.
Although the opening title sequence had me completely enthralled. Never before have I seen plain white text utilized to such massive proportions. These were obviously opening credits meant for someone who’s nearly blind. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention them and give you an example. Dig on the screen cap below:
Netiquette be damned, these are some shouting-ass caps! I can only imagine what these huge letters would have looked like on the big screen. I watched this flick in a room that was pitch black, and the white onscreen text lit up the room like early morning. Even worse, they seemingly go on forever. Really … what the fuck, man? Moving on.
Once your pupils adjust and go back to normal, you’ll find that Vinyan tells the tale of a young couple in Thailand who are coping with the loss of their young son. Little junior was swept away by a tsunami in that area which left hundreds dead. Unable to have closure because his body was never recovered, our duo spends most of their time in a constant state of mourning.
After seeing what could be their son on a video taken in the area, our energized parents hire a guide to help them search through Burma to find the village that this little white kid was holed up in. If only they would have gotten Rambo to show them around. Then we would have had something.
In a nutshell that’s the whole story. No more, no less. What we have here is a skeleton with no meat on its bones. A paper-thin story, with an even thinner script, and absolutely no reason to care. Sewell and Beart do their very best to keep things going, but they have zero to work with. Hardly anything at all happens in this film, and when it does, you’ll be half asleep and likely won’t give a shit. The only positive thing I can say about it is that visually it can be amazing, but how long can you stand to look at a pretty picture before your mind starts to wander elsewhere? Didn’t take me long at all.
Should you want more (though I can’t imagine why), there’s a near fifty-minute making-of included here that takes a look at what went into bringing this project to life. Truth be told, this was even better than the feature. At the very least it was interesting.
File Vinyan under “missed opportunity”. This was a film that could have been great. Instead the horrid pacing of the project drags it straight down into the mud, where it sits with its feral stars – chattering and writhing pointlessly.
Special Features
2 out of 5
Special Features:
2 out of 5
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