"Canh Dong Bat Tan” (Floating Lives) has brought audiences of the 15th Pusan International Film Festival to tears in a room filled with the weight of human despair and the beauty of resilient emotions.
It competed in the New Currents category at the film festival which wrapped up today in Pusan port city, South Korea.
South Korean audiences saw the film before Vietnamese can do as of October 22. Silence fell in two projection rooms with nearly 800 seats in Lotte movie-theater as the Monochord’s lament came to a halt. The silent sound of tears was only broken by a heavy round of applause.
Adapted from Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tu’s novel, "Boundless Rice Field", the movie directed by Nguyen Phan Quang Binh centers around a family living in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and a man’s search for romantic redemption.
Father Vo (Dustin Nguyen), daughter Nuong (Lan Ngoc) and son Dien (Vo Thanh Hoa) live nomadically on a boat after the father burned their house down in retaliation for his wife's infidelity.
They drift from one rice field to the next, rearing ducks and doing occasional handy jobs. When Suong (Do Thi Hai Yen), a hooker, joins the family to evade an angry mob, Nuong and Dien welcome her as a surrogate mother and object of pubescent fantasy, while a volatile relationship develops between Vo and her.
Young director Nguyen Phan Quang Binh reaches his audiences most deep-seeded emotions as he digs down through his characters’ cruelty, loss and despair to the most fundamental need and desire for love.
The waterways not only hold and lead the family’s boat, but also symbolize the characters sifting, drifting and endless fluid emotions while also embodying the graceful flow of Binh’s visual storytelling.
The actors deliver an outstanding performance. Nuong conveys not only her suffering but also her strength in containing it and mastering it while living on the edge of that painful abyss seen only through her piercing look. She is able to elicit strong emotions and bring her audiences to earnest tears without long and elaborate dialogues, but with the sheer strength of her acting.
Hai Yen (Suong) surpasses all expectations and proved her critics wrong as she aces a role many had deemed unsuitable for her talent. Her performance makes the onscreen Suong come to life more powerfully than even the carefully described one in the book. Her careful balancing of emotions, with love and compassion on one end and despair on the other, bursts out of the screen with unmatched vigor.
Dustin Nguyen (Vo), plays the most challenging role, as his rage builds up throughout the movie fueled by the pain and shame caused by his wife betrayal.
His is a very articulated acting tale of pain and interior torments ordered through daily acts of cruelty.
The carefully arranged and paired soundtrack talks directly to the audience’s hearts. The sad and lonely sound of the traditional Monochord and the melodies composed by Vietnamese Quoc Trung emerge as direct testimonials from the true soul of the Mekong Delta.
Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s "Boundless Rice Field" was published in the South Korean version in 2007.
All 12 films competing in the New Currents category at Pusan International Film Festival reflect contemporary issues like poverty, war, overpopulation and loss of traditional values. The movies include “The journal of Musan” (South Korea), “Eternity” (Thailand), “Strawberry Cliff” (Hong Kong), My Spectacular (China), The Quarter of Scarecrows (Iraq) and Ways of the Sea (Philippines).
Tickets to “Floating Lives” were sold out one week before the screening, according to organizers.
No comments:
Post a Comment