‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’ Review: A Spiritual Wander Through Rural Vietnam Makes For a Transfixing Debut
25.05.2023 - 09:43
/ variety.com
Guy Lodge Film Critic All of life, including death, is in the lengthy, unbroken shot that opens Thien An Pham’s bewitching debut feature “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” We begin on the sidelines of a local soccer match in Saigon’s city center, observing the play from a cool distance before following a shuffling mascot, dressed in a wolf suit, to the adjoining bar. There, crowds watch a 2018 World Cup fixture while a group of young men, turned from the TV, drink and discuss matters of faith, existence and ennui. Thien (Le Phong Vu) is quiet and morose, only half-invested in a conversation already beset with distractions: the sales pitch of a bubbly beer rep, the burst of a sudden summer thunderstorm, a metallic screech and grim thump as the camera again drifts serenely over to reveal the aftermath of a fatal motorcycle crash. In the ensuing rhubarb of bystander concern, Thien stays put.
The absence of cuts in this immaculated choreographed long take feels not merely like technical show-offery, but a reflection of Thien’s own detached presence in a world passing him by. It’s only later, in the middle of an erotic massage at a gentlemen’s spa, that he learns the casualty of the crash was his sister-in-law Hanh; its survivor, his five-year-old nephew Dao (Nguyen Thinh). It’s an acidly comic way into tragedy, cuing a wandering spiritual inquiry that will take in many such dazzling shifts in tone and perspective along the way, all wrangled with preternatural confidence and formal invention by its young director. Fully delivering on the promise of Pham’s well-traveled shorts — one of which, 2019 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight winner “Stay Awake, Be Ready,” was the root for this feature — this is challenging but seductive art
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