Mediterrane 2024 Review: VIET AND NAM, Mesmerizing Slow Drama Explores Personal and National Histories

The young Vietnam-born, France-based filmmaker Truong Minh Quy has created one of the most intriguing films of 2024, Viet and Nam.

Truong, who also wrote the script, focuses on two young queer Vietnamese miners in 2001. These miners, who pose as brothers in public, navigate a life enmeshed in coal dust, which not only supports them but also serves as a stark symbol of their homeland's environmental degradation.

When Nam (Thanh Hai Pham) contemplates emigrating through illegal channels, the film delves into the tension between his love for Viet (Duy Bao Dinh Dao) and his desire for a better future, highlighting the harsh realities of poverty and the hazardous conditions in the mines.

Truong Minh Quy’s work consistently traverses the realms of memory and history, often drawing from personal and collective experiences. His previous films, such as The Tree House, demonstrate a blend of documentary realism and lyrical abstraction, frequently reflecting on the notion of home and the impact of war on personal and family histories. Viet and Nam continues in a similar trajectory.

Viet and Nam fits into Minh Quy’s filmography, marked by its meditative pace and rich, contemplative visuals. His choice to shoot on Super 16mm film stock imbues the movie with a sense of timelessness, serving as a visual metaphor for the enduring themes he explores.

The film’s structure, divided into two distinct parts, echoes the duality of the characters' lives and the historical schism of Vietnam itself. This bifurcated narrative technique highlights the internal and external conflicts faced by the characters while mirroring the nation's divided past and uncertain future.

The narrative contrasts two generations: the younger generation, represented by Viet and Nam, who yearn for a brighter future, and the older generation, embodied by Nam's mother, Hoa (Thi Nga Nguyen), who is entrenched in the past, searching for her late husband’s remains.

The film’s form and style are reminiscent of last year's breakthrough by another emerging Vietnamese auteur, Pham Thien An, in Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. While Viet and Nam also consists of several tableaux, these are more interlinked with the plot compared to the standalone scenes of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. Minh Quy’s work, though less transcendental and more grounded in the socio-political dimension, retains a lyrical and poetic approach.

The director of Viet and Nam employs longer, dreamy, languorous takes interspersed with moments of heightened visual poetry. In his poetic approach and blending of fiction and documentary filmmaking, Minh Quy’s style is reminiscent of Brazilian auteur Gabriel Mascaro, particularly his film August Winds. Both filmmakers achieve an almost magical realist quality, remaining anchored in mundane reality without veering into surrealism.

Nam's decision to emigrate reflects the broader issue of exile and migration, a recurring theme in Minh Quy’s work. This narrative is poignantly tied to the tragic real-life event of 39 Vietnamese migrants found dead in a refrigerated truck in Essex in 2019, which serves as a backdrop to the film.

The director’s exploration of Vietnam’s wartime legacy is intricately woven into the characters' journey. Guided by a war veteran who fought alongside Nam’s father and is now aiding his mother, the characters revisit historical sites and memories, creating a dialogue between past and present.

Carefully framed scenes in the former Viet Cong territory and at the Ba Chúc Memorial deepen this exploration, bridging personal and collective histories. Cinematographer Son Doan’s observational documentary shots elicit a misplaced poetry, evoking lyrical moments from mundane observations with melancholic undertones.

Viet and Nam exhibits several formalistic aspects of slow cinema in terms of aesthetics and framing; however, the film is not technically part of the genre, as it is as plot-driven, even if elliptical, as it is contemplative. Minh Quy successfully merges different genres, topics, and stories. The film assimilates queer romance, social realist drama, immigrant tragedy, identity, and personal and national histories through a psycho-geographic canvas of Vietnam, balancing documentary realism with poetic imagination.

Viet and Nam was banned in Vietnam. (Read about this and more in the director's interview in Filmmaker Magazine.) 

The film recently screened at the 2024 Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta.