Delta

I recently saw this at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Mihail (Felix Lajko) has saved his money in the city to return to the village where his mother (Lili Monori) lives with her boyfriend (Sandor Gaspar) and his half sister Fauna (Orsolya Toth). Mihail sets out to build a house on the river delta on land his father owned. Fauna helps Mihail with the construction and lives in a hut with him while the construction his under way. The villagers consider Mihail an outsider and are opposed to the idea of a half brother and sister living alone together. Writer/director Kornel Mandruczo in a script co-written by Yvette Biro offers this rural tale of a developing incestuous relationship in a film beautifully shot by cinematographer Matyas Erdely and superbly edited by David Jancso. The film looks so good that every scene is a virtual painting but the storyline is a little weak with underdeveloped characters, weak dialog and a plodding pace. This perhaps may have worked better as a 20 minute short film but stretched out into a feature with little background on the characters and village life weakens it. I would give this a 6.5 out of 10.

This film is a very bad example of uninspired storytelling, which tries to hide behind an "artfilm" facade, trying to shock the audience with unmotivated violence (against women) to cover up for it's lack of psychological depth of the characters & internal conflicts. Everything in this movie is pretentious, from the thank you's to Bela tarr at the beginning, to the photography, the acting, music, the story & editing. When suddenly, without reason, you are forced to watch close ups of "charismatic" looking hungarian country people in their boats, while the soundtrack is trying to persuade you that this is supposed to be a dramatic moment, although they are only on the way to the funeral of the local alcoholic, thats one thing. Putting completely unmotivated rape scenes as a shocker is a different thing, for which i absolutely have no comprehension. This movie is trying really hard to enter a certain genre of artistic (east European drama kind of) films but lacks the subtlety, observational skills and "soul" that other directors have.

Having difficulty understanding other reviewers, including major film critics, description of the film. The central sexual encounter is a violent rape by the stepfather - not incest. At no point do we see any incest or I would suggest any hint of incest. Brotherly love we do see, but in such a way as the bigoted may well encounter incest in there minds. As is the incest is in the eyes of those who cannot read the film, as it is in the peasants who cannot tolerate the intruder. A perfect image of misreading occurs when we have silhouettes behind a sheet, cleverly implying a sexual reading, only for us to be brought short when we realise it is the pegging out of the washing. What we do see is male violence to women. We learn that the half-brother is much affected by nursing a girl who had got pregnant " I had to nurse her, the baby was stillborn, But she disappeared" Owes a bit too much to Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky, and these bit come over as mannered. Given better fortunes in the making of the film the pacing may well have been better considered. and the overly beautiful camera better integrated into the story, a story which was rescued in the making.

... I think that Delta is a very bad movie, in the sense that the plot is not not developed enough as carry the film and the acting is extremely poorly directed and conducted.

Paradoxically though, it has some of the most amazing photography and camera work that I've ever seen, so in a way it sadly becomes the purest example of what is the typical alternative European movie these days (with some exceptions, of course!): beautiful, but bad. So bad that it seems like some sort of sketch making a parody of European movies, so bad that it makes it even funny.

The main actor spends all the time looking down, probably trying to give the impression of living in some deep state of introspection. The girl gets raped every time she goes out. The nicest character is a small turtle playing the role of itself. They fortunately hardly speak. End of.

Delta wants to sound like some deep work of art, but it is just artificial and extremely pretentious in the end of the day. Horrible movie, wonderful painting.

The scene consists of the wetlands around a large river. The people are a family and a number of people from the small village they live in. Life is on a pretty much normal path until one of the family members, a man in his thirties, returns after a period of being away. He wants to live in a cabin he wants to build himself, right in the middle of the wetlands. All starts off well. He's getting the materials he needs for the building, the provisions he needs for living. Then he gets company - his sister joins him in the building of the cabin. And as time passes by and the cabin starts to take shape, things start to turn a bit ugly - the two of them cross a border that brother and sister should not cross.

And there is the tale of the film. How does one deal with a taboo like this? Brother and sister as a pair. Can one accept it? Or is it something that should not be tolerated, no matter the costs of breaking them up? This film, worked out very soberly (which is an absolute plus), shows how people respond to something like this happening and draws a very fine line between trying to grow sympathy for the brother and sister - and a cooler distance towards the people of the town. The ending is easy to predict - it is inevitable given the situation. It's a bitter pill though. And so we have it: a harsh message packed in the most sober wrapping.

8 out of 10 pained relatives