Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River, finds Christina Hendricks as Billy–a mother trying to make ends meet in the crumbling suburbs of Detroit. Streets are deserted and otherworldly. Houses are abandoned and demolished as nature swells around the city that America forgot. While Billy’s son (Iain de Caestecker) lands himself and his friend (Saoirse Ronan) in trouble with the neighbourhood psychopath (Matt Smith), Billy begins work at a burlesque club of violent, nightmarish attractions.

As Billy, Hendricks is powerfully sombre – proud despite the world – but a neutered script precludes any real engagement with characters. A shaven-headed Matt Smith is underwhelming as Bully. He wears a gold sequin jacket, riding a lounge chair mounted on a convertible Cadillac Eldorado; at one point he even cuts the head off a live rat with a pair of scissors. Despite all this, he’s not that scary. Ben Mendelsohn plays the infinitely more menacing bank manager Dave; more menacing, though barely more believable.    

Expecting some kind of shrine to gothic Americana, that’s not what I got. There’s no wistful voiceover. There is a small-town curse, but Gosling’s hands are too full of tropes to pay any one too much attention. The lush wet greens of an overgrown suburbia blend strangely with the fluorescent light shows of downtown. Nicholas Winding Refn’s penchant for neon (Drive, Only God Forgives) has apparently rubbed off. I’m a sucker for it myself, but even I was left queasy at the dripping electric mauves, blues and scarlets. If the palette is sickly, the camera can be stingy and impatient: refusing to linger on scenery, or even properly convey a scene’s space.

It’s easy to see why this film was critically panned at Cannes. It’s busy and overambitious. Big themes – sexual violence; social disintegration – are blown-up, often gruesomely, and then not explored. It’s pretentious without the requisite creative proficiency. And yet among its hectic lighting and thrumming soundtrack, there are moments – only fleeting – of very tender beauty.

Lost River is currently avaible on BFI Player.