Actor, heartthrob, feminist meme, cereal denier: does Ryan Gosling need another string on his bow? Debuting as writer and director, his efforts on Lost River were largely dismissed during both festival and cinematic runs as derivative and muddled; it was harsh then and on second viewing only seems more so. It may not be the subtlest film ever made, and it wears its influences on its sleeve, but Lost River is also beautifully shot, thought-provoking and certainly never dull.

The story of a town in peril, Gosling’s film finds the titular Lost River facing the two-pronged threats of greed and cruelty. Some of last people left in these all but deserted surroundings, Bones (Iain De Caestecker) and his single-mum Billy (Christina Hendricks) are struggling to keep up payments on a mortgage they never should have been granted. Whilst Bones scavenges the ruins for things to sell, meeting a rodent owning neighbour named Rat (Saoirse Ronan) and incurring the wrath of underworld ruler, Bully (Matt Smith), his mother attempts to gain sympathy from the local bank manager, Dave (Ben Mendelsohn), soon finding herself coerced into a job at his sinister nightspot.

Early dialogue is almost documentary-like, an older resident telling Bones of the wonderful childhood he had before his home was lost. The visuals, however, project a new reality, the richly saturated colours lending things an otherworldly quality. Filmed by regular Gaspar Noé cinematographer, Benoît Debie, every frame shines as a well-composed photograph, always beautiful and never perfunctory. At times it feels post-apocalyptic, Bully surveying his barren kingdom from a car-mounted armchair like a small town Mad Max villain. At others, it’s more akin to a fairy tale, a row of partially submerged lampposts resembling the necks of ancient beasts and leading Bones toward the truths of the past.

Gosling’s own roots, meanwhile, are less concealed, with allusions to his favourite filmmakers visible throughout: from the dreamscape approach of Lynch, to the neon lights of Refn, and a score by Johnny Jewel that evokes the electro-atmospherics of Drive one minute and the haunting chimes of Dario Argento’s Suspiria the next. There’s even a nod to Jurassic Park. For the most part it works, creating a film with no shortage of style – occasionally, however, things become slightly confused. A sequence exhibiting the full danger of Mendelsohn’s leering predator shoots for weirdly unnerving, but hits closer to inappropriately funny. Similarly, whilst some of the script’s more overt moments call to mind an acceptance of strangeness often present in Lynch’s work, others are simply silly; it’s difficult to avoid rolling eyes when Bully asks Ronan’s character whether anybody else has ever ‘touched her rat’.

Such surface level failings may account for Lost River’s critics marking it as clumsy or hollow. On the face of things, there is lots of show for little substance, a central message about the rich displacing the poor and the aggressive suppressing the meek being conveyed almost immediately. Yet there’s more going on here. ‘Bully’s running everything now,’ a character observes at one point, and with his rhinestone jacket concealing blades used to maim or silence anyone that threatens his dominance, Smith’s character could easily be seen as a merciless studio head, keen to ensure that the only output is his. Meanwhile, in Dave’s club, female performers like Cat (Eva Mendes) and Billy find that they can only get work if they’re willing to offer themselves as relief for pent-up male aggression, their objectification extending beyond the realms of titillation and into that of violence. And this is just one thread of many. Gosling’s cine-literate approach doesn’t just mimic the work of his heroes, it plays with it, weaving it into a parable that suggests we shouldn’t cling onto the past, but use it to build a more promising future. From this perspective, Gosling’s is looking bright.