Delta

Don’t be fooled by the sublime surface beauty of this dour, impenetrable drama from Hungarian Kornél Mundruczó, as this is a film that glides along on the strength of shots and scenes rather than ideas and plausibility. An introspective, hirsute man returns to his mother, who is married to another man. There’s no room in the house, so he elopes with his spindly sister and together they begin the arduous task of constructing a new dwelling in the middle of the Danube. As the bond between the pair becomes too strong to suppress, the scruffy, brandy-swilling locals (who look like they’ve been drafted in from a Béla Tarr movie) become wary of the couple’s odd endeavour. Mundruczó generates a moderate amount of intrigue from the build-up but stubbornly resists handling his themes in any direct and digestible fashion. Instead he opts for oblique plotting and portentous (often biblical) imagery to drag his film across the finishing line.