Vietnamese filmmaker Le Lam Vien is an alumnus of Busan's Asian Film Academy as well as Talents Tokyo, with “Fix Anything” having already won the 2022 Silver Screen Award for Best Director in the Southeast Asian Short category.
Fix Anything is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
The movie begins with an impressive panoramic view of the city, which is followed by an equally impressive presentation of the protagonists, Minh and his Father, which includes a van that manages to look both decrepit and futuristic. Although the latter advertises it as a massage parlor in a street peddler that is standing next to his son, its actual use is of a ‘memory eraser”, with the aforementioned actually providing the first ‘test subject' for machine that does seem to work.
With a very pleasing, funky music in the background, father and son then proceed with the van to a junkyard, with the father challenging the son to break a window with some scrap metal, in a series of events that end up with them kidnapping the owner and placing him in the memory eraser. Things, however do not go as expected.
Le Lam Vien creates a very entertaining mashup of genres, with the movie including drama, crime, comedy and sci-fi in a fashion that is as entertaining as possible. The first aspect is more subtle, essentially deriving from the fact that Minh's father has used all his knowledge and mechanical abilities in order to create a machine that will essentially allow him not to pay what he owes. It is this aspect that also provides the main comment of the movie, on how poverty gives birth to innovation, with a secondary one dealing with the concept of memory.
The production values of the movie are truly top notch, with DP Ngo Ming Nghia capturing both the interior of the van and the exterior locations the film takes place in with gusto, implementing the aforementioned mashup in the best fashion, while adding a slight noir essence, that also works well here. The red and sepia tones also add to the visual prowess, while the excellent music by Felipe Salas Sandoval adds even more to the entertainment the movie offers. Du Huy Tao's occasionally frantic editing seem to be dictated by the funk rhythms here, in a pace that suits the overall aesthetics to perfection.
Le Anh Tuan as Minh and Le Hong Giang as his Dad give very fitting performances, in perfect resonance with the narrative approach, while exhibiting a very appealing antithesis throughout the short.
Granted, the humor is a bit pedantic on occasion (too local if you prefer), but this is the only, and actually minor issue in a movie that is as entertaining as possible within the 15 minutes of its duration.
