Turning the camera towards your own family is an act that can be dramatic, revealing, and occasionally too hard to stomach for everyone involved. At the same time, it can also be cathartic, but it definitely is brave. Canadian-Vietnamese filmmaker Carol Nguyen did exactly that however, and the result is definitely all of the above.
No Crying at the Dinner Table is screening at Viet Film Fest
The film begins with what seems to be the director's family, father, mother and sister, sitting at a table, with Nguyen playing back at them a tape of what she recorded them saying. Her mother talks about the lack of affection both her parents and she exhibited to each other, how she only hugged her mother once and her father not even that. Her sister talks about their grandparents, and how their room always felt as a safe space she could go as a kid into, whenever something she could not handle would happen. The father talks about an uncle who fell sick and the regret he still feels for his attitude just before his death.
Essentially, it seems that all of them speak about death, regret, and things they have never actually uttered out loud again, with the tape recorder functioning as the medium with which their confessions are communicated both back to themselves, and to the rest of the members of the family. As they listen to the recordings, they start to realize that their attitude in life is the direct result of their parents' attitude, eventually ending up in tears. At the same time however, their tears bring a kind of catharsis, which is eloquently communicated through the sister's jokes, and the final act, which highlights the impact the recording had, but also the importance of communicating one's feelings and thoughts, in a rather satisfying finale.
In order to avoid having a film that only consists of a recording, Nguyen also has shot them in various instances of their daily life, with the mother gutting a fish as she is about to cook, the sister taking a bath and the father burning incense, in a series of images that provide a welcome relief, and are also rather powerful in their realism. This aspect benefits the most by Walid Jabri's cinematography, with the low lighting, and the occasional zoom to various parts of the bodies of the interviewees adding to the overall imposing atmosphere of the short, which could be characterized as almost ritualistic.
“No Crying at the Dinner Table” is sincere, touching, brave, and it seems to have provided a much needed catharsis for everyone involved, while the comments Nguyen makes add to an appeal that definitely moves beyond the borders of the particular family.
