In Minh Quý Trương라이브 바카라 Viet and Nam, our embodied experience as spectators floats into a state of suspension. Dreams melt. Sensations blur. We meet characters who disappear into a space between imagination and projection. History falls through echoes and glances in this love story embossed with national trauma. Bodies whisper into each other in tiny crevices. Time becomes loose, fuzzy. In this almost-unbearably exquisite romance between two men, the love story is only the outer layer, slowly pulling back and revealing a tortured nation.
Viet and Nam isn’t interested in a schema of realism. Drab, despairing, it sits somewhere between unrequited longing and pockets of ecstasy. The latter is spare, buried under the desperate desire for closure. To trace a personal expression demands, at first, a surrender of the past. Reconciliation with ghosts of time and fate hovers over Viet and Nam. Set in 2001, history shades the dealings of many characters, especially Nam (Pham Thanh Hai) and his mother Hoa (Nguyen Thi Nga). Both are struck in the memory of Nam라이브 바카라 long-lost father, who went away to serve in the Vietnam War before Nam was born. Hoa never got any word on his whereabouts, yet remained hopeful of his return for the longest time. When Nam asks her if she ever felt envious that his father might be resettled elsewhere with a new wife, she remarks, “Even jealousy needs time.” Hoa barely got to know him intimately, having met him just once before the wedding and parted soon after.
Lately, Hoa has persistent dreams about her husband and the whereabouts of his grave. She believes there라이브 바카라 a giant tree somewhere in the countryside that might be the key. As they recur in her dreams, the film folds into the romance between Nam and Viet (Dao Duy Bao Dinh)—two coal miners staging intimacy in underground depths. Backs speckled with coal dirt, they forge their private world—anthracite glimmering like a bright, needy secret. Son Doan라이브 바카라 camera prises breathtaking beauty from this space. It might be tiny, tucked away into a corner, but it has the expanse of a universe, where two souls come together in sorrow and hope. Nam라이브 바카라 perspective and his family monopolize much of the film. Viet registers only relationally. Nam라이브 바카라 mother shares a tacit approval of his relationship. She suggests, “Come home with him more.”
But they lead tough lives. Constant want shadows them. Though his mother assures him “It라이브 바카라 not a sin to be poor”, Nam seeks to move abroad and build a better future. Separation-pang splices into their relationship. The journey abroad for migrants is full of danger, unpredictable and all-eclipsing. People are dumped in shipping containers in cruise ships, or hurled into plastic bags dragged underwater. Aware of how deadly this could turn, Viet is hesitant and anxious about Nam라이브 바카라 decision. Could he even survive abroad if he makes it through? Cynical, Viet shares his reservations. Of course, the move—even if it라이브 바카라 meant to be temporary—could end up tearing the lovers apart. Everywhere, there are anecdotes about men whose partners went abroad and have never been back, mothers waiting for their sons’ return with bated breath.
Implicitly, for Nam, to move abroad is also vital to purge his father라이브 바카라 burden. He라이브 바카라 too caught up in his memory, despite never sharing any moment or seeing him. It bears heavy on him. The move would be a liberatory impulse. Though both men are fatherless, it라이브 바카라 Nam라이브 바카라 ache that mostly saturates the film. When a war veteran Ba (Viet Tung Le), who worked closely with Nam라이브 바카라 father, proposes that he has an idea of the grave라이브 바카라 location, they depart in search of a resolution that might propel them further in life. As it turns out, there are other people as well who’re looking for the remains of their loved ones. A psychic channels the dead in what eventually builds up to the film라이브 바카라 most intellectually provocative section. Individualizations cease to matter; a nation tries to confront and make peace with its past. In this languid dream-state, voices, stemming from underground, beckon to those above who’re still spiritually lost, wandering, stagnating.
Then there라이브 바카라 the question of the land itself, its pits concealing the country라이브 바카라 repressed secrets and unstable future like the coal miners’. Viet and Nam maps a journey from land to ocean—both unreliable, fraught and impossible to encompass. In its numinous zone, the dead and the living meet in a strange slipstream, each inhabited by the other. The film is like a drifting dream, wedged between waking reality and semi-consciousness. In it, we awaken into tragedy—anticipated grief flowing through with a sense of pre-destination.
Viet and Nam opened in US theatres on March 28 via Strand Releasing.
