''Vinyan'' is a 2008

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

horror film directed and co-written by

Fabrice du Welz Fabrice Du Welz (born 21 October 1972 in Belgium) is a Belgian film director and screenwriter. He has directed several films including '' Calvaire'' in 2004, '' Vinyan'' in 2008 and '' Message from the King'' in 2016. Career Fabrice du Welz, ...

and starring

Emmanuelle Béart Emmanuelle Béart (born 14 August 1963)
''Tecinema.jeuxactu.com''. Retrieved 21 April 2020. is a F ...

Rufus Sewell Rufus Frederik Sewell (; born 29 October 1967) is a British actor. In film, he has appeared in ''Carrington (film), Carrington'' (1995), ''Hamlet (1996 film), Hamlet'' (1996), ''Dangerous Beauty'' (1998), ''Dark City (1998 film), Dark City'' (1 ...

, and

Julie Dreyfus Julie Dreyfus (born 24 January 1966) is a French actress who is well known in Japan, where she made her television debut on a French language lesson program on NHK's educational channel in the late 1980s. She has appeared on the TV show ''Ry� ...

. The film premiered at the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival (, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival held in Venice, Italy. It is the world's oldest film festival and one of the ...

on 30 August 2008.

Plot

Jeanne and Paul are a wealthy couple who lost their son, Joshua, in the Boxing Day Christmas tsunami of 2004. Six months later, having stayed over in

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

, they view a film at an orphanage fund-raiser made by Kimberly Park, just back from the Andaman Coast, of Moken and Salone natives in the South Tanintharyi division. A restricted area only accessible by boats through a triad of Thaksin Gao who has military ties that smuggles girls to bars in

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. Jeanne sees a vague figure in the distance she believes to be Joshua. Discouraged by Jeanne's lead, Paul gives in to contacting the triad's leader Thaksin Gao and hiring one of his boats for an exorbitant 'one-time' fee. At first taken to a false decoy in the

Mergui Archipelago The Mergui Archipelago (also Myeik Archipelago or ''Myeik Kyunzu''; ) is located in far southern Myanmar (Burma) and is part of the Tanintharyi Region. It consists of around 800 islands, varying in size from very small to hundreds of square kilo ...

where male orphans, the females not present, cast balloons at night to ward of the vinyan spirits, the French couple is further misled, as indicated by pointing on a map, to an uninhabited island south of Macleod Island (west of Zadetkale Island) where, their resources depleted, find themselves equally lost in a region of lost male orphans.

Cast

Emmanuelle Béart Emmanuelle Béart (born 14 August 1963)
''Tecinema.jeuxactu.com''. Retrieved 21 April 2020. is a F ...

as Jeanne Bellmer *

as Paul Bellmer * Petch Osathanugrah as Thaksin Gao *

as Kim

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on 30 August 2008. In North America, the film premiered at the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...

on 5 September 2008. It was released to DVD on 7 April 2009.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, ''Vinyan'' has an aggregated score of 53% based on 19 reviews. David Jenkins of '' Time Out'' said the film is "a menacing pseudo-horror thriller with arty aspirations". He also gave praise to Béart, saying she "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." In contrast, Andrew Pulver of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' wrote, "Du Welz never manages to generate enough menace – this is no ''

Apocalypse Now ''Apocalypse Now'' is a 1979 American psychological epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella '' Heart of Darkn ...

'' – and the film never really solves the dubious plot anchor of westerners terrorised by anonymous Asiatics."

Richard Corliss Richard Nelson Corliss (March 6, 1944 – April 23, 2015) was an American film critic and magazine editor for ''Time''. He focused on movies, with occasional articles on other subjects. He was the former editor-in-chief of ''Film Comment ...

of ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' heavily criticized the film, calling it "an affront to cinematic decency".

References

External links

* *
Press kit
2008 films 2000s English-language films English-language French films Films set in Thailand 2000s psychological drama films 2000s psychological horror films 2008 psychological thriller films Films set in 2004 2000s buddy drama films Films set in Myanmar 2008 horror films British buddy drama films British drama films French drama films Australian drama films Belgian drama films Films directed by Fabrice Du Welz 2008 drama films 2000s British films 2000s French films 2000s Belgian films English-language horror films English-language thriller films English-language buddy drama films {{2000s-horror-film-stub