Vivid but frustratingly abstract, Michelange Quay’s debut feature owes much to Claire Denis, but is bereft of the great French filmmaker’s imagination, specificity and humour. Largely free of dialogue, Quay’s film is set in contemporary Haiti and seems to be about, among other things, post-colonial guilt. A dying French woman and her daughter (Sylvie Testud) interact wordlessly with a pair of male Haitian servants and a group of young, formally attired boys that visits their mansion. Quay has a sharp eye and assembles an array of stunning, dreamy images (the dying woman bathing in milk; the boys tearing apart a giant white cake; a man gnawing on a burning log in a voodoo ceremony), but even as these images accrue, they ultimately add up to little. (JM)