In the opening moments of ’s third feature , a svelte figure emerges from one corner of the frame and glides to another. He seems like an apparition, an unreal entity wading through an enveloping blackness. White flakes float around him, dotting the dark expanse like stars against a night sky.
When the shrill whine of a bell interrupts the constructed reverie, a more realistic scene comes into focus: Two men rush to button up their shirts and resume their work. , which premiered at Cannes in May in the Un Certain Regard sidebar before bowing this week at , is a dreamy observation of romantic devotion and haunted histories. Its protagonists — Viet, played by Dao Duy Bao Dinh, and Nam, played by Pham Thanh Hai — are lovers whose relationship blooms in the underground corridors of a mine in northern Vietnam.
The first layer of the film revolves around the questions that plague the couple once Nam announces he’s leaving the country. It’s the early 2000s, shortly after 9/11, and Nam plans to pay a trafficker to smuggle him out through a shipping container. The news destabilizes Viet, forcing him to reckon with what a future without his lover looks like.
Running parallel to this heartbreaking narrative is the existential tale of a nation so besieged by the legacy of war that even the landscape, pocked with undetonated bombs, remains a threat. That Quy’s feature has been in Vietnam (speculatively because of the director’s “dark and negative” portrayal of his home c.