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Rating: Year 2004, Thailand: Mother Nature reminds us of her power, showering us with a wall of water and mud.
In Phuket, Janet and Paul lose little Joshua, swept away by the great wave that hides and destroys everything. A mother's hopes are the last to die, and the two do not give up; they remain in the Far East, nurturing the hope that the fruit of their love has not disappeared. A video projected by a humanitarian organization, a blurred frame, and there it is: surprise. Joshua is there, still alive.
"Vinyan" (wandering soul in Thai) is the story of a hallucinatory search, a journey to the edges of reality that takes the two protagonists to a completely "other" dimension, where love deprived of its object turns into obsession, madness. Fabrice Du Welz skillfully avoids gallons of blood and tons of clichés, immersing the viewer in a dark and paranoid atmosphere, aided by the splendid cinematography and the handheld camera, shaky and nervous, almost incredulously following the unfolding events. The ending is unsettling, where Janet and Paul find themselves definitively immersed in a world of young "wandering souls," tangled in the darkest recesses of human nature, leading to a shocking conclusion.
Even though set in an inevitably allusive context (the cannibal movies of the early '80s, Lynch, even Freud and Greek tragedy...), "Vinyan" remains a disturbing and frightening film that, after the splendid "Calvaire," reveals the immense talent of its creator. Du Welz knows the mechanisms of fear and is capable of impressing not with a bloodthirsty serial killer or an alien creature, but by showing, in a raw and unfiltered way, the monstrosity of a tormented mind.
A mind willing to do anything, even for a journey with no return.
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