Truong Minh Quy draws interesting parallels between the trauma of his country’s war-stricken past and the tragedies of its present in Viet and Nam, which revolves around the dual axis of a young man’s search for the burial site of his long-dead freedom-fighter father and his relationship with a lover he will soon be separated from, as he plans to move abroad for work.
While the film is filled with shimmering images aplenty – including a literally sparkling trompe d’oeil – the director falls short of using the texture of his 16mm film stock to its full potential. The same could be said of his characters, who could do with more thoughtful fleshing out, while their slow-burning relationships generate more a sense of lethargy than melancholy.
It’s inevitable that comparisons will soon be drawn between Viet and Nam and Inside the Yellow Cocoon, the Vietnamese feature which won the Best First Feature award at Cannes before embarking on its very successful festival tour. Like Pham Thien An’s three-hour film, Quy’s third feature is slow-moving, contemplative and relies heavily on personal stories to explore Vietnam’s contemporary historical narrative. Quy also brings to the screen something which has been largely overlooked: the plight of war widows and orphans seeking closure through the search for the remains of their lost loved ones.
This is perhaps Viet and Nam’s strongest suit, with its engaging depiction of a northern Vietnamese family’s trip south to a battlefield near the Vietnamese-Cambodian borderlands, and the things they see and experience there. Interestingly, the beating heart of this journey is not the film’s two leading characters, but the mother of one of them. Nguyen Thi Nga delivers a touching performance as Hoa, a middle-aged coal seller who last saw her husband off to war in the 1970’s. She is determined to find the place where he died with the help of another veteran (Le Viet Tung).
Echoing that long-ago goodbye between husband and wife is the impending separation between Hoa’s son Nam (Pham Thanh Hai) and his fellow miner Viet (Dao Duy Bao Dinh). Having had enough back-breaking toil, Nam has decided to find a better future abroad. By plunging him into both the claustrophobic environment of those decades-old underground coalfaces and then the literally suffocating conditions he goes through as an illegal immigrant, Quy laments how the nature of his people’s struggle for survival has remained very much the same. Truong Trung Do’s production design bolsters Quy’s screenplay in bringing such sentiments into the open.
Quy’s decision to use celluloid has paid off in the film’s first part. The grainy imagery evokes the monotonous, murky ambience of the depressed character’s miserable hometown to maximum effect. The 16mm stock also adds a documentary-like quality to the sequences there, with Quy and his editor Felix Rehm even retaining (or adding) the odd blots and scratches to individual frames. Once the film moves to the sun-scorched south, however, the grittiness evaporates, as the film plummets towards melodrama in a scene centering around a psychic’s histrionic performance in a religious ritual.
Viet and Nam’s weakest link lies with, well, Viet and Nam. Their first scene in the film provides the viewer with a substantial introduction to the pair, as they are shown whispering small stories into each other’s ears in the dark. And then a bell rings, and Quy reveals they are actually taking a break in the corner of a mine. They switch on their headlights, revert to their stoic selves, walk over to join the other labourers in their work. Later, a walk on the seashore, where the similarly dressed pair walk and talk, repeats the frisson of the opening scene.
But then their bond seems to be put on hold, with the actors Hai and Dinh left with nothing much to play with but expressions bordering on perennial ennui. It’s as if Viet and Nam, with their internalised traumas, have become merely ciphers for Vietnam. It’s perhaps a good thing in terms of what Quy’s trying to say, but not exactly the best way to keep audience engaged with their stories as flesh-and-blood individuals.
Director, screenwriter: Truong Minh Quy
Cast: Pham Thanh Hai, Dao Duy Bao Dinh, Nguyen Thi Nga, Le Viet Tung
Producers: Bianca Balbuena, Bradley Liew
Executive producers: Alex C. Lo, Glen Goei, Teh Su Ching, Chi K Tran, Anthony de Guzman
Director of photography: Son Soan
Editor: Felix Rehm
Production designer: Truong Trung Dao
Sound designer: Vincent Villa
Production company: Epicmedia Productions Inc.
World sales: Pyramide International
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
In Vietnamese
129 minutes
