The Banishment (12A)
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Your support makes all the difference.Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose first picture was the sublimely haunting The Return, hasn't quite matched its impact with his second.
Shooting in long, meditative takes, he unfolds a tragic tale, of mistaken motives and ruinous pride, like a Russian Thomas Hardy.
A man (Konstantin Lavronenko) repairs to an isolated house in the country with his wife (Maria Bonnevie) and young children. While he waits there – for what? – she reveals to him that she's pregnant, and that it's not his. The film works mostly in ellipses and silences, establishing a solemnly mysterious mood that has something to do with the man's shady brother (Alexander Baluyev, very convincing). But Zvagintsev misjudges the structure and dilutes the dramatic crux with a half-hour of flashbacks; too little, too late.
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