We decided to make a list that includes some of the best and most significant films we have seen lately from Vietnam
Throughout the years, and at least to the people who do not deal extensively with Vietnamese cinema, the local movie industry was almost exclusively represented by Tran Anh Hung, whose films like “Cyclo”, “The Scent of Green Papaya” and “Vertical Ray of the Sun” are the first that come to the mind of any cinephile. However, the Camera D’or for best first feature film Pham Tien An won at the 76th Cannes Film Festival for “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” showed that there might be more to local cinema than the aforementioned director, who did won Best Director for “The Taste of Things”, in a production though, that is exclusively French.
Furthermore as Le Chou wrote in an article published last year in Asian Movie Pulse, “For the first time in modern Vietnam cinema since the establishment of its box office tracking, six local films topped the Vietnam box office in 2023 and combined to capture more than a third of the total box office receipts. This dominating performance by local films is a stark reversal of 2022, when the top local film only placed sixth in the year’s overall ranking behind Hollywood and other foreign films.“
Lastly, the inauguration of the first Ho Chi Ming International Film Festival and the presence of the 2nd Danang Film Festival, both of which welcomed a number of international guests (the former seems to be much bigger though) cemented the fact that something is moving in the local industry, also in financial terms.
In order to highlight the fact, we decided to make a list that includes some of the best and most significant films we have seen lately from the country, with the focus being on the 2020s, without omitting, though, those of the previous decade, which one could say paved the way. Without further ado, here is the list, in random order.
Khuong Ngoc directs two very different stories, both of which, however, present quite eloquently the consequences of internet, social media, and fame addiction, which have gradually become the rule in many parts of this world. In that fashion, the comments presented in the movie are spot on, and essentially move beyond the consequences of the web, into the human psyche. How sex and human pain in all its forms attract (web) viewers is one of the main ones in the first story, with Ngoc using a particularly direct and even grotesque on occasion approach to highlight this remark. That people are willing to indulge in both, from both sides, the presenters who actually make the content and the viewers, who are even willing to pay to watch people get disgraced, is another rather pointed comment here, cementing the rich context of the movie.
Thien An’s formal decisions further reinforce this sense of hypnotic reverie. Much like his critically acclaimed 15 minute one-take short film “Stay Awake, Be Ready”, “Yellow Cocoon” also relies heavily on extended duration as a structural device. Most, if not all, scenes are composed of radically long takes, where the camera glides, swoons, and perambulates around, almost becoming a character onto itself. This tendency reaches its zenith in a wondrous twenty-five minute shot, which starts with an outdoor conversation between Thien and Trung (Hanh’s brother), and finally ends – after a winding motorcycle ride through traffic, and a slow zoom-in through a window, redolent of Antonioni’s “The Passenger” – with Thien inside the house of a local shroud maker, the air heavy with memories of war, longing, and death. (Vedant Srinivas)
Although it is difficult to understand what the film is exactly about, with Minh Quy Truong implementing a rather abstract/ultra art-house approach, as it unfolds, it becomes evident that its basis is Vietnam and its history. With the whole thing taking place in 2001, as various references indicate, the director tries to speak about the collective trauma the country experienced due to its past and the financial issues it suffered from (at the time). In that fashion, the victims of the Vietnam war and the way the country was forced into a civil one is highlighted particularly through Hoa and Ba, who cannot seem to move forward, although for different reasons, as the twist close to the finale highlights.
Despite starting in a relatively calm fashion, with Ha Le Diem’s camera capturing the beauties of the misty mountains and the mischievousness and fun the girls have, as the film progresses, the direness of the situation becomes more and more evident. Swann Dubus’s editing helps the most in that approach, with the succession of scenes being ideal in order to build the “story”, and in a pace that allows the documentary to flow harmonically. Nevertheless, starting with the abuse Di’s mother suffers at home, the fact that a number of locals are alcoholics, but most of all, her denial to be married off to a boy who is not exactly eager himself, the calmness gives itself to violence, and a cat-and-mouse “game” with terrible consequences begins.
There are barely any changes in the plotline of this adaptation that sticks to all major details from the original regarding the identity swap and character development, but the small alterations of the culturological nature (the local setting, the eating habits and relationship between people) work quite well, bringing the events in the film close to the Vietnamese audience. (Marina Richter)
There is almost no dialogue throughout the film, which puts the actors is a position of disadvantage, as they have to play their characters only by the means of movement and gestures, while facial expressions and micro-acting plays the part only in the rare close-up shots. However, the clarity of Le’s vision and the precision of his instructions are impeccable, the actors’ actions are synchronized that they resemble either a ritual or a dream. There are a few monologues in the film, Bassley speaks only in Yoruba (two of his themes are the son he has left behind in Nigeria when he departed to Saigon to earn money and the memory of his first erection), while one of the women also narrates how she lost her family in Vietnamese, raising the issue of language as a possibly obsolete code of the communication. (Marko Stojiljković)
Tran Thanh Huy directs a film that works in a number of levels, through a score of different genres and through a plethora of practices that could well be perceived as tributes to some great movies of world cinema. Regarding the last aspect, the overall great editing of Lee Chatametikool and TranThanh himself is quite reminiscent of the sudden-cut tactics Guy Richie, as implemented in films like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” while the chasing scenes have something of a “Bourne” and “Run Lola Run” essence. The whole setting of the slums, with its violent reality and the fact that the protagonists are teenagers shares many similarities with films like “City of God” and “Slumdog Millionaire” while the whole concept of the numbers reminded me of a plethora of Hollywood gangster movies that used the Harlem game of numbers, and particularly “Hoodlum”. However, the aforementioned do not mean that Tran Thanh just copied other films, since the way he has embedded all the aforementioned elements in a Vietnamese setting and combined them in order to produce something original mean that he completely owns the end result.
Essentially, what Mayfair depicts in her film is the image of a hermetic time and place. The rigidness of the patriarchal ruler and them clinging to a system based on faith and tradition has become brittle, and as Hung’s father is entering the last years of his life, his offspring aimlessly follows in his footsteps. While his eldest is a man defined by his urges and the refined etiquette of patriarchy, Hung’s son already demands to escape the code of power and its preservation through marriage. (Rouven Linnarz)
Despite the fact that “The Last Wife” begins as a kind of a parody of “The Third Wife”, the film soon switches into a drama filled with agonizing moments, something that definitely is towards its benefit. As such, through an approach that remains entertaining throughout the 132 minutes of its duration, Victor Vu manages to make a number of social comments about the lives of people of the era that do echo quite intensely, though, even today. In that fashion, the blights of patriarchy and the concept of the male heir plague essentially all the protagonists, including the Governor, who does emerge as the villain of the story though, due to another central comment here. This one focuses on the discrepancies of society between the haves and the have-nots, with the way the Governor treats his subjects and particularly Nhan’s father, as much as his rather corrupt ways, making the particular remark quite evident throughout.
“Song Lang” is a love story, gently told and slowly unraveling. The director’s devotion for stage performance and Cải Lương is what has influenced all his life choices as a performer and director, taking him to this point; his movie is a passionate love letter to his teenage time in Saigon in the 80’s, his tape cassettes and the way art influences life and vice versa. (Adriana Rosati)
Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.
Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.
Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.