Latest news with #VietandNam
San Francisco Chronicle
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: In ‘Viet and Nam,' war's toll looms over gay coal miners' affair
The United States will soon mark the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which essentially ended the Vietnam War. April 30, 1975, still haunts Americans with lessons learned and not. The same goes for the Vietnamese people, who are sorting their way through their own hearts of darkness. 'Viet and Nam,' a drama set in 2001, tells the story of two gay coal miners. One of them, Nam (Pham Thanh Hai), agrees to help his mother (Nguyen Thi Nga) search for the remains of her husband, the father Nam never knew, who was killed in the war. The other, Viet (Dao Duy Bao Dinh), is his constant companion, content to carry on their love affair in shadows and darkness, but is not signing off on Nam's plan to leave the country illegally. For director Truong Minh Quy, the film, which recently screened at the 68th San Francisco International Film Festival, is a tale of displacement and loss, and a country that sacrificed perhaps too much for victory. His ruminative, languid style reminds one of Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang, two princes of pondering. But while 'Viet and Nam' is filled from beginning to end with outstanding visuals and thought-provoking ideas, it is perhaps too lethargic and, at a little over two hours, overlong. Yet there is still much to enjoy. The first half of 'Viet and Nam' is stark and confining, from the dark claustrophobia of the coal mines — where a gorgeously composed sex scene occurs — to the small flat Nam shares with his mother and uncle (Le Viet Tung). The film opens up in the second half when all five set out on their quest across lush rural areas that still carry the scars of war. Truong clearly didn't make his film for an American audience specifically, though perhaps an international one, much less targeted it for the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, as it premiered a year ago at the Cannes Film Festival. Yet the timing of its release stateside is apt. There was another side to the Vietnam War, and hopefully Americans and Vietnamese can grieve and empathize, if not as one, then together.
New York Times
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Viet and Nam' Review: A Soft Kiss Underground
Portrayed with an entrancing hush by the actors Duy Bao Dinh Dao and Pham Thanh Hai, Viet and Nam are coal miners — and lovers. They are also the title characters in 'Viet and Nam,' the director Truong Minh Quy's haunting, meticulously paced drama set in Vietnam in 2001. If you surmise Quy is up to something with these two names, you're right. From its start in the blackness of a mine shaft to an indelible image of a shipping crate adrift, the movie meditates on juxtapositions, among them: South and North, the public and the private, staying and going, darkness and light, mothers and fathers. Early on, as a television station broadcasts the names of the Vietnam War's still-missing soldiers, Nam and his mother, Hoa (Nguyen Thi Nga), putter around their home. Count the two among the families still hoping to find their loved ones' unmarked graves. While Nam, Hoa, Ba (Le Viet Tung), who fought alongside Nam's father and carries a secret, and Viet travel south to find the burial site, Nam is also making plans to leave Vietnam. His impending departure injects another kind of melancholy into the picture. (The film was banned in Vietnam for what censors saw as its dark portrayal of the country.) Quy treats the love affair between Viet and Nam with exquisite tenderness. One of the movie's scenes — startling for its frankness but also its visual beauty — finds the men reclined in the dark of the mine. The film makes clear that even though Nam and Viet must be wary they are also achingly in love. Viet and Nam Not rated. In Vietnamese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In theaters.
