Involuntary

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The winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Ruben Ostlund's series of vignettes tackles crime, punishment, authority, responsibility, and their consequences. In execution, Ostlund's film veers from subtle to obvious, and interesting to dull.

The vignettes comprise of a bus driver refusing to take the passengers home until one of them admits they tore the curtain in the toilet; two teenage girls pose suggestively for their web cam before taking to the streets, drunk; an upper class father refuses to go to the hospital when struck by fireworks; a teacher witnesses another beat a student and won't stand for it; a group of mates retreat to the country for the weekend where homoerotic games take a nasty turn.

Cutting between these short stories, visiting them for only a few minutes at a time, Ostlund hopes his film will gather pace as the plots evolve but it doesn't happen. Some stories do gather momentum - the bus driver's stark refusal to move the bus until someone confesses has a real air of tension, and the teacher's story has a dark tone - but all is lost when Ostlund cuts away to the other stories, which vary in significance: the fireworks father doesn't have anything going for it and the lads in the country is rather pointless.

Ostlund seems more intent on his style than the stories and their message, however. The director's penchant for shooting his actors with their heads out of frame, or off screen, or obscured by furniture and doors, is intrusive and distracting and takes away from the point of the exercise. The viewer ends up watching his shots and wondering why he's putting the camera where he puts it instead of following the stories. The style halts any possibility of engrossment.

What Involuntary has going for it, apart from the one or two interesting plots, are the performances. Mostly played by unknowns the actors don't put a foot wrong - the teenage girls especially shine - in their believable turns.