A quiet young man returns to his native region, the wild Delta, where the villagers live cut off from the world around them. Here he has the chance to get acquainted with the sister he has never known. He decides to build himself a home there and, while working on the house, he and his sister become closer than the social convention permits. Punishment from the xenophobic villagers is not long in coming. The only representative of Eastern European cinema in competition at Cannes this year, Delta deals sensitively with its thorny subject matter yet includes some gritty scenes. The relationship between the sibling couple gives an impression of being pure and uncorrupted, and the director himself confesses that he was not looking to make a film about incest so much as to explore the boundaries of personal freedom. The minimalist film plays out at an almost meditatively slow tempo in visually attractive setting amidst uninhabited nature. The isolated environment of the village surrounded by water helps build a strong drama experienced more inwardly than outwardly. |