THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
We had to think about it: put together two syllables, which are also two names, Vietnam and Nam, and turn it into a movie title. It not only evokes the country ravaged by the longest war of the 20th centurymy century (1955-1975), but also the fate of two men in love, Viêt (Dao Duy Bao Dinh) and Nam (Pham Thanh Hai).
This collage sounds like a manifesto (the homeland under the LGBT flag), revisiting the trauma of war in a disturbing way, and Truong Minh Quy’s film, presented at Cannes (Un Certain Regard section), will not be shown in his country, Vietnam. Born in 1990, the director embraces his influences (Tarkovsky, Bresson, Resnais) while at the same time carving out his own language. Vietnam and Nam It is his third feature film, after The tree house (2019) and The City of Mirrors: A Fictional Biography (2016).
Vietnam and Nam work 1,000 metres underground as miners. We see them languid, their faces blackened by work, their torsos shining: from the heat, from sex? The basement looks like a cave with a starry sky. Coming from the documentary, before studying at the Fresnoy school in Tourcoing (North), the filmmaker wanted to transcribe his impressions when he went down into the mines, during explorations. There, the noises were muffled and the fragments of coal distilled surprising threads of light. Truong Minh Quy recreates in the studio a fairyland for his lascivious lovers, with crude language. With their headlights, Vietnam and Nam look like two Pierrots fallen from the moon. They are deep underground, where coal serves as a cloak for their pranks.
Separation spectrum
Vietnam and Nam This is a story of love, crossing, exile and the search for a missing soldier. Nam, who lives with his mother, never knew his father, who went into battle without knowing that his wife was pregnant. The fantasy of this man of whom we have heard nothing for twenty-six years (the age of the son) is one of the main threads of the story. The other narrative thread is heartbreak: Viêt is preparing for Nam’s next departure. He has decided to clandestinely board one of these containers where migrants are crammed together, in the hope of a better life. This is the occasion for an impressive scene, when Nam practices crossing the river in a plastic bag.
The film is also plastic, its shots worked with a 16mm patina. It could get bogged down in its beautiful images, but Truong Minh Quy makes the story take off by blurring the temporal and spatial markers, until arriving at this device that mixes land and sea: a coal cavity embarked in a floating container. The film is set in a recent, somewhat vague past, although it alludes to the events of September 11, 2001, with the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan. Television continues to broadcast wanted posters for martyrs. A veteran who knew Nam’s father remembers… Fake soldiers, life-sized figures, look at the viewer during a hallucinatory visit to a war memorial.
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