This bleak, handsome picture won a best actor award at Cannes for its lead, Konstantin Lavronenko. It begins in muscular style with a dead-of-night dash by a gunshot-wounded brother to his sibling Alex (Lavronenko).
Star rating: ***
Dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev
With: Konstantin Lavronenko, Maria Bonnevie
click here to watch the trailer
This bleak, handsome picture won a best actor award at Cannes for its lead, Konstantin Lavronenko. It begins in muscular style with a dead-of-night dash by a gunshot-wounded brother to his sibling Alex (Lavronenko). Instead of settling into a routine crime drama, the action shifts to the countryside and a very different tale unfolds. Alex, his wife (Maria Bonnevie) and two children have come in search of a break, but what ailed the couple in the city follows them out of it. Director Andrei Zvyaginstev sets up the story in a series of bold, brutal strokes, then leaves his cast to get on with it. With barely any dialogue to pierce the tension, The Banishment is an engrossing watch which answers its central question - can love endure all things - in uncompromising fashion.
- Filmhouse, Edinburgh, until Thursday, September 11
