Cinema is Dope

Just got in today the English press notes for Vinyan. Selected parts from it are below. I’m not sure who does the two interviews below or else I’d properly credit them. There is some lost in translation moments in this from whomever ported it over from French.

Select Press Notes

SYNOPSIS

Unable to accept the loss of their son in the 2005 Tsunami Jeanne and Paul Belhmer have remained in Phuket (Thailand). Desperately clinging to the fact that his body was never recovered, Jeanne has convinced herself that the boy was kidnapped by traffickers in the chaos that followed the catastrophe… that her son is still alive. Paul is sceptical, but cannot bring himself to shatter his wife’s last hope.

Bribing the sinister Mr Gao to take them by boat to the pirate-infested jungles of the Thai/Burmese border, the traumatized couple embark on a quest that will plunge them through paranoia and betrayal, ever deeper into an alien universe, a supernatural realm where the dead are never truly dead, and where nightmares, obsession and horrifying reality converge…

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FABRICE DU WELZ
DIRECTOR

Born October 21, 1972, Fabrice du Welz gorged himself on horror movies before studying dramatic arts in Liege and directing at INSAS. He wrote gags for Canal+ (LA GRANDE FAMILLE, >NULLE PART AILLEURS and others) while working on his own short films with a crew of regulars that included cinematographer Benoit Debie. Du Welz followed his short QUAND ON EST AMOUREUX C’EST MERVEILLEUX (Grand Prix de Gerardmer 2001), with his first full-length CALVAIRE, which screened in Critics Week at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. VINYAN is his second feature film.

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INTERVIEW WITH FABRICE DU WELZ

BEGINNINGS

First, there was the desire for an adventure. And an obsessive idea: children who kill. When the Tsunami hit, I got the idea of setting my story in this post-apocalyptic climate. The point of departure was concrete; a devastated landscape and a western couple who had lost their child in the Tsunami. These elements allowed me to set off in search of a lost child – the sole child – in order to go in search of a multitude of others – the many – in the jungle.

CINEPHILE

VINYAN enabled me to realize the type of film I always dreamed of making as an adolescent. VINYAN is a fantasy of cinema, a transgressive experiment that owes a great debt to my love of the great paranoid cinema of the 70s.

GHOSTS

VINYAN isn’t a traditional ghost movie, with the dead entering the world of the living. Here, it’s the living who intrude into the world of the dead. The idea was to immerse a western couple who blindly refuse to accept the death of their child in a part of the world where death is a continuation of life. As I see it, a society that denies aging and death so obstinately is a society going very wrong. The Belhmers embody this.

THAILAND

VINYAN is clearly a Thai film. In the same way that CALVAIRE was a Belgian movie. The film plunges us into a rainy, dirty, grey Thailand, a million miles away from the tropical paradise picture postcard clichés of a film like THE BEACH. There was also the notion that the settings should accompany step by step the couple’s mental deterioration. To this end, we paid a very particular attention to the choice of locations and the look of the film’s settings.

EMMANUELLE BEART

Michael Gentile suggested her during our unsuccessful search for an English actress. At the time, I thought it was a false lead, but she showed a real interest in the script. We met and her motivation revealed itself clearly. During the shoot, Emmanuelle gave me everything. She was there at every take, and our collaboration was very constructive. Her performance is physical, exceptional… people may well be surprised. And she and Rufus together make a very believable couple.

VISUAL STYLE

Benoit Debie (the DP) and I think about things very visually. For VINYAN we begin our journey with the real; the flashing electric light of the Bangkok night and slide slowly towards expressionism, and the muted colors of an ever more hostile jungle. At this stage in our collaboration, Benoit and I love nothing more than experimenting, and this constant investigation enriches our creative collaboration tenfold.

THE TEAM

I’ve been working for a long time with the same cinematographer, the same script, the same sound mixer… they’re indispensable. I have their trust and they’ve got mine. We all have the same demands and we all look in the same direction.

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