Delta

I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Mihail (Felix Lajko) has saved his money in the city to return to the village where his mother (Lili Monori) lives with her boyfriend (Sandor Gaspar) and his half sister Fauna (Orsolya Toth). Mihail sets out to build a house on the river delta on land his father owned. Fauna helps Mihail with the construction and lives in a hut with him while the construction his under way. The villagers consider Mihail an outsider and are opposed to the idea of a half brother and sister living alone together. Writer/director Kornel Mandruczo in a script co-written by Yvette Biro offers this rural tale of a developing incestuous relationship in a film beautifully shot by cinematographer Matyas Erdely and superbly edited by David Jancso. The film looks so good that every scene is a virtual painting but the storyline is a little weak with underdeveloped characters, weak dialog and a plodding pace. This perhaps may have worked better as a 20 minute short film but stretched out into a feature with little background on the characters and village life weakens it. I would give this a 6.5 out of 10.

This film is a very bad example of uninspired storytelling, which tries to hide behind an "artfilm" facade, trying to shock the audience with unmotivated violence (against women) to cover up for it's lack of psychological depth of the characters & internal conflicts. Everything in this movie is pretentious, from the thank you's to Bela tarr at the beginning, to the photography, the acting, music, the story & editing. When suddenly, without reason, you are forced to watch close ups of "charismatic" looking hungarian country people in their boats, while the soundtrack is trying to persuade you that this is supposed to be a dramatic moment, although they are only on the way to the funeral of the local alcoholic, thats one thing. Putting completely unmotivated rape scenes as a shocker is a different thing, for which i absolutely have no comprehension. This movie is trying really hard to enter a certain genre of artistic (east European drama kind of) films but lacks the subtlety, observational skills and "soul" that other directors have.

The scene consists of the wetlands around a large river. The people are a family and a number of people from the small village they live in. Life is on a pretty much normal path until one of the family members, a man in his thirties, returns after a period of being away. He wants to live in a cabin he wants to build himself, right in the middle of the wetlands. All starts off well. He's getting the materials he needs for the building, the provisions he needs for living. Then he gets company - his sister joins him in the building of the cabin. And as time passes by and the cabin starts to take shape, things start to turn a bit ugly - the two of them cross a border that brother and sister should not cross.

And there is the tale of the film. How does one deal with a taboo like this? Brother and sister as a pair. Can one accept it? Or is it something that should not be tolerated, no matter the costs of breaking them up? This film, worked out very soberly (which is an absolute plus), shows how people respond to something like this happening and draws a very fine line between trying to grow sympathy for the brother and sister - and a cooler distance towards the people of the town. The ending is easy to predict - it is inevitable given the situation. It's a bitter pill though. And so we have it: a harsh message packed in the most sober wrapping.

8 out of 10 pained relatives

A young man comes back from wandering to his home town on the Danube (in Romania). We don't know how long he's been gone or much about what he's been doing. When people ask him intrusive questions he just stares at them. He looks very ragged, like he hasn't had a shave or a haircut in three months.

He finds out when he briefly visits mum that he's got a half-sister called Fauna. He decides he wants to live out in the marshes of the delta, and Fauna runs off with him, in an incestuous fever. Some of you may have heard of the phenomenon referred to as Genetic Sexual Attraction. This is when siblings live apart until they meet at adulthood, at which point they feel an overwhelming sexual attraction for one another. So just in case anyone would feel the incestuous side of the story is unrealistic, I promise you it isn't.

Mihail and Fauna live in a shack in the delta, building a house on stilts in the middle of the lake during the daytime. This is presumably so they can get away from the copious amphibians, and the toad chorus that is their bedtime accompaniment. The toads actually may well represent the townspeople.

It's a pretty minimalistic and slow film (the credits include a thanks to Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky), with marvellous cinematography. Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély is into his abstract patterns and we see some great shots for example of timber stacks and swirling inky black water. There's also a panning shot of the delta that would make a Dutch genre painter salivate, and a funeral scene that would stir the bones of Tarkovsky. There are moments to sigh and gasp at the cinematography.

It's obvious all along that things aren't going to end well. Fauna's stepfather is jealous and the local scum have decided that Fauna and Mihail are setting themselves up above everyone else. What is beautiful, tear it down.

The film reminds me of an aphorism I heard once heard, there are two peasants, the first of whom has a cow. The second peasant is visited by God who says that he is willing to grant him one wish; the ignorant peasant's wish is that God kills his neighbour's cow.

It's not a licentious film; there is no emphasis on the incest and the sex side of things. However there are scenes that are not for the faint of heart.

Some reviewers have tried to paint a picture of this film as incomprehensible; don't be misled into believing that. There are even mystical touches to this film, there's something deep and primal and wet about the delta; I felt almost like I was waste deep in water at points. The delta is maybe about a closeness to God, or whatever secular equivalent you feel deep within. The delta is where the land crumbles away, it's fertile and gliding into an ocean. Forget it's the Danube and the Black Sea, and feel the essence, the fertility, the clarity, and the flow. At the end I was left with the raw taste of vodka and watermelon, and an intense feeling of immense communal jealousy.

cold beauty. brutal scenes. amazing images. a house in delta. a movie like a poem. clear, fragile, fruit of silence who grow - up in middle of words. a film from East and that fact is demonstrated by its role of testimony. a film about sense. honest at whole, using actors as parts of nature, reflecting a special form of pain, almost a sketch, it is touching and good occasion to discover the roots of world . two people. and a community. symbols, dark emotions and a religious veil who defines each scene. a movie who has transform the viewer in part of it. only for the frame of questions. for precision to remember details. for the cruelty scenes. for its end who seems be last part of a travel behind the world. a movie as prey. or meditation. a honest and admirable exercise to translate the silence out of common expectations.