A Dreamy Tale of Queer Love and Historic Trauma

In the uncovering moments of Truong Minh Quy’s third feature Viet and Nam, a svelte figure ecombines from one corner of the structure and glides to another. He seems appreciate an apparition, an unauthentic entity wading thraw an enveloping bdeficiencyness. White flakes float around him, dotting the miserable expanse appreciate stars agetst a night sky. When the shrill whine of a bell disturbs the originateed reverie, a more authenticistic scene comes into concentrate: Two men rush to button up their shirts and resume their toil. 

Viet and Nam, which premiered at Cannes in May in the Un Certain Regard sidebar before botriumphg this week at New York Film Festival, is a dreamy observation of romantic devotion and haunted histories. Its protagonists  — Viet, take parted by Dao Duy Bao Dinh, and Nam, take parted by Pham Thanh Hai — are adorers whose relationship blooms in the underground corridors of a mine in northern Vietnam. The first layer of the film rgrows around the asks that scodirect the couple once Nam declares he’s leaving the country. It’s the punctual 2000s, lowly after 9/11, and Nam set ups to pay a dealer to smuggle him out thraw a shipping includeer. The novels deequilibrates Viet, forcing him to reckon with what a future without his adorer sees appreciate. 

Running parallel to this heartshattering narrative is the conshort-termial tale of a nation so besieged by the legacy of war that even the landscape, pocked with undetonated explosions, remains a danger. That Quy’s feature has been banned in Vietnam (speculatively becaengage of the straightforwardor’s “miserable and adverse” portrayal of his home country) speaks to the sensitivity of these still uncover wounds. Quy (The Tree Hoengage) grounds cerebral asks of historical trauma in the relationship between Nam, his mother Hoa (Nguyen Thi Nga), his dead overweighther and his overweighther’s frifinish Ba (Le Viet Tung). In exploring how the ruptures of the past map themselves onto relationships in the conshort-term, he elegantly approaches a understandn theme: how war reverberates thrawout generations, imposing on witnesses and their successors.

The legacy of his overweighther — finished before Nam’s birth during the war, somewhere in the southern region of the country — haunts Nam’s subalertedness and his body. The unburied sgreaterier comes to him and his mother in their dreams, and there are moments thrawout when Hoa retags on how much her son see appreciates him. Despite never having lhelp eyes on him, Nam experiences drawn to understand where and how his overweighther passed, and before absconding from Vietnam embarks on a journey with Hoa, Ba and Viet to discover the site of his death. Isn’t that how war, or any inherited trauma, toils on living spirits? Compelling us to search and exhume?

The strongest sequences in Viet and Nam conshort-term novel ways to understand this grisly inheritance. They brhelp Nam’s relationship to Viet with his search for his overweighther, elucidateing the lesserer man’s desire to exit Vietnam even if it unkinds separating from this real adore. Circular conversations between Nam and his mother uncover the hgreater that the struggle still has on their psyche. In a scene in which Nam traverses a forested area csurrfinisher Cambodia with his family, the spirit of his overweighther seems to seize him. He becomes the descfinishen sgreaterier and, piecing together fragments of stories he’s heard over the years, envisions his overweighther’s final moments in voiceover during a surauthentic sequence.

Viet and Nam’s relationship is its own comardent of dream, carried out mostly in the mines where they consummate their adore and barachieve their hopes. Working with his cinematographer Son Doan, Quy films these scenes with a frank tfinisherness. The sensuousness of these moments recall the relations scene in Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, which was aprobable adept at capturing the ecstasy of youthful romance with a gentle touch.

Hai and Dinh portray their characters with appropriate pathos and moments of reserved humor, and their downtake partd chemistry, as well as a wrenching final scene, originates one desire that Quy indulged more in how these two retardy to each other. The straightforwardor (with editing by Félix Rehm) liberates the plot from licsurrfinisherity and take parts with the order of events, which bolsters its meditative quality. But the approach might be a struggle for those less inclined to surrfinisher to associative trains of thoughts. It also originates the relationship between Viet and Nam, filled with so many striking moments, experience oddly secondary to the historical disinterment. So much of Viet remains a mystery, as contrastd to Nam. 

Although the movie present there’s a degree of interalterability in the pair — the finish commends enumerate the characters as “Viet/Nam” and then name both actors — the men are still individual enough to permit more alertation. How does history weigh on Viet iradmireive of his relationship with Nam? Lengthening the film, which runs a little over two hours, might have mitigated that tension. Quy has accomplished someslimg exceptional with Viet and Nam. That’s enough of a reason to stay in its world.