“Leave the light on. It’s easier for me to dream.”
The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from one corner of the screen to the other. He has another boy on his back. A dream is gently relayed in voiceover. Then, without the frame ever having truly revealed itself, it’s gone.
This is capital-S and -C Slow Cinema––the most considered kind. The kind that stirs up feelings you didn’t know you had, leads one to revelations they might’ve never come to, and ultimately seeks to center us, all through the vast, contemplative space it hollows out for the viewer simply to exist in. And it doesn’t sacrifice entertainment to achieve such. The time spent in each scene is earned so it can amuse, please, thrill, concern, or relax in any given moment. And the stillness and repetition is so tasteful and drawn-out it could be a John Cale album.
The story of Viet and Nam––two twiggy, soft-spoken boys who fell in love thousands of feet underground in the coal mine where they work––is steeped in the horrific history of the Vietnam War, which left a generation of Vietnamese children fatherless, if not entirely alone. That history haunts our leads––especially Nam, whose father was never found dead or alive after two decades of bloodshed. Like so many others, Nam’s father is an unmarked grave somewhere in the jungle, a spiritual affront to his soul per some Vietnamese beliefs and traditions, his soul drifting aimlessly, restlessly until his family finds him: a seemingly impossible task.
The film is just as much about human-trafficking––a dark, treacherous, and unfortunately hopeful route for people in poverty in Vietnam, like Nam and his mother Hoa (Thi Nga Nguyen in a wonderful performance, and an instructive one for all mothers who want to connect with their queer son). Much to Viet’s displeasure, Nam wants to emigrate into a better life he envisions for them and only has the means to do so illegally.
Nam, of course, doesn’t want to go alone, but Viet doesn’t love the idea or trust the process. He knows it would entail many harrowing moments, like being zipped up in a plastic bag and pulled underwater by an aboveboard swimmer or being sealed shut from the outside into a refrigerated shipping container that would theoretically make its way cross-ocean on an industrial cruise vessel, somehow shoring their need for air, water, food, and a trustworthy liaison. Needless to say, it’s easy to side with Viet when we realize the inherent risk. But it’s only easy from the comfort of a theater seat. And they are in no such position. Moreover, Nam isn’t budging, and they can’t imagine separating.
Before Nam leaves, he wants to find his father. Together with his mother, Viet, and one of his father’s troopmates, they journey to an area where the old soldier expects Nam’s father might’ve died, only to encounter more people doing the same, some of whom have enlisted psychics to guide them. Families wail and wander slowly behind the ghost-faced clairvoyant, taking anything the psychic says as truth––even that the dirt is their bones.
It’s things like this––and trying to escape to a better life, or the overarching themes being explored in the country’s identity––that have led to the film’s rejection from its home country before it premiered at Cannes. The Vietnam Cinema Department released an official letter condemning its “gloomy, deadlocked, and negative” perspective on the nation and its people. In other words: it didn’t pass state-required censorship. Minh Quý has pushed back, of course, hoping people see the film as “a tender and emotional expression of what is happening in the country from a Vietnamese filmmaker.”
The Cintel-scanned film-grading is gorgeous, accentuating the texture of Son Doan’s 16mm cinematography; the darkness and depth of the palette create distinct worlds between the suffocating pitch dark of the mine and the living, breathing greens sweeping across the Vietnamese countryside in daylight. Vincent Villa’s immersive, pinpoint sound design is some of the most affecting this year.
There’s a deeply felt, corporeal romance between Viet and Nam that always comes out in the mines, their faces black with soot, camouflaged heads popping out of their navy workman jumpsuits bookended with jet-black hair and boots. The starlight of quartz glistening in the black anthracite wall they lean up against makes an intimately close yet expansive night sky out of the backdrop.
In between face-smashingly passionate makeout sessions they retrace their dreams in the still of the mine to swooning effect, and it feels like this is all happening in outer space, as if time is infinite, the boys’ love eternal. Minh Quý’s slow-cinema sensibilities are nothing short of spellbinding, the trance of rumination within reason enough to seek it out. And if that’s not enough, go for the best final shot of the year: a breath-stealing beauty that will leave you frozen in your seat even after the credits are over.
Việt and Nam screened at the 62nd New York Film Festival and will be released by Strand Releasing in 2025.