Monsoon

For those that felt this film was too slow, too unfocused, too whatever.... Too bad for you. I love small films like this, that unveil themselves by the frame, that tell a simple story about complex circumstances and lives. To me, it was beautiful, understated, mesmerizing. A glimpse of Vietnam today, the toll the war took, the transition to economic advancement, the personal suffering and lives changed, and more. I grew up as a kid with the fake Vietnam body count on the nightly news during supper. I also grew up to be gay, and to watch that aspect of this story slowly develop left me with hope. And yes I would see it again, if only to see even more nuance I might have missed. This film was almost a random choice on a Netflix night.... I'm glad I made that choice.

Movie night with Iris.

Director Hong Khaou draws upon his own experiences with this moving tale of a British-Vietnamese man returning to Saigon for the first time in over thirty years to try to find a fitting place to scatter his parents' ashes.

This opens with a beautiful aerial shot showing a road being devoured by a swarm of scooters before a number of cars attempt to struggle their way through. As well as preparing the viewer for the constant soundtrack of Vietnamese traffic, it is an effective metaphor for the protagonist's own struggles. We are taken along on this journey of discovery for Kit as he deals with the emotional turmoil of bereavement at the same time as exploring his own cultural identity, feeling simultaneously like a tourist and someone with roots in a country foreign to him.

Monsoon is not for those with a preference for plot-driven films with mood and emotion very much driving the narrative.

For every critic afraid to tell the truth about an Asian centric film starring Henry Golding, I'll do it for you. It's a non-existent script where Henry spends 75% of movie wandering around saying and doing nothing. With little character development and zero depth to Henry's acting, there is little left of value to the film. Perhaps this emotional, mostly nonspeaking journey could have been saved by an actor who knew how to act well enough to make us feel something, anything, besides boredom.

Not without its moments but Hong Khaou's 'Monsoon' feels frustratingly underwritten and unfocused. The acting appears wooden in many scenes and, when all is said and done, the movie is largely pointless.

Several times now I have stumbled across comments ( both in reviews and in television guides ) that the lead actor is straight. It is as if this is a comfort blanket for those in the audience who a ) do not want to confront a gay actor in the film, and b ) for those liberals who think how marvellous it is to see a straight actor being ' brave ' enough to take on the role. This is a recurring issue. James Ivory's ' Maurice ' was awash with it and so was ' Call Me By Your Name '. Given the discreet homophobia of both mainstream cinema and theatre it is not surprising Gay actors will not raise their heads above the parapet. The fact of having to explain an actor is straight is a sort of deadly homophobia in itself. Now for the film that I liked a lot. The acting from all of the cast was good but above all the direction was exceptionally good. The opening shot of cars scurrying about from a great height, like some sort of insect was a scary acknowledgement of how tiny we are in the scheme of things. This I believe occurred several times during the duration of the film and for me it was a revelation. Like an anthill we struggle with our histories, both political and personal, and how that very history is trodden on by the large feet of time. That alone made the film above the ordinary. The minimalism of the film also appealed with its Antonioni obsession with the sense of place around us mere humans, and the way we alternate between silence and noise. Of course there is a story, and for those who are interested in what has happened in Vietnam important, and the dislocation of a man who returns to a country he knew only to find he is more or less a stranger in a strange land. As for the homosexuality it is there, but despite a few brief scenes discreet. It is quite simply another aspect of the history of a character immersed in living in this great anthill called human life.