THE BANISHMENT/IZGNANIE

Directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev Club, IFI, Dublin, 156 min
Photograph: The Irish Times

THE JURY at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival produced several surprises in deliberations that generally reeked of compromise.

The most baffling were the omission of No Country for Old Men from the awards, and, the presentation of the best actor award to Konstantin Lavronenko for his glowering one-note performance in The Banishment.

Clearly, some jury members insisted that The Banishment should receive a prize, any prize. If it had to get an award, it ought to have gone to cinematographer Mikhail Krichman for his handsome, precisely framed widescreen compositions.

The film is based on a 1953 William Saroyan novella, The Laughing Matter , which is transposed from California to an unnamed country (it was shot mostly in Moldova and Belgium). It's the second feature from Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev, after his auspicious debut with The Return (2003). Again the influence of Andrei Tarkovsky is in evidence, but the film falls far short of Tarkovsky's achievements, or of fulfilling the promise Zvyagintsev demonstrated with his earlier feature.

Lavronenko plays Alex, a dour, domineering man who goes to his late father's remote rural home with his wife, Vera and their two young children. The beautiful pastoral setting seems idyllic, but what transpires is certainly not. Vera reveals that she is pregnant with her third child and that Alex is not the father. He discusses his dilemma with his brother, a wounded criminal, and they ponder the option of abortion, even if Vera is unwilling to accept that.

The film is cold and distancing, deliberately leaving crucial elements unseen, unexplained or underdeveloped, and it is laden with portentous religious references and an ominously employed score by Arvo Pärt. While Zvyagintsev reaffirms his distinctive visual flair, his film appears to be much more concerned with style over substance.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times