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In mythologising Vietnam, the country can be split into two: Việt, holding the breadth of Vietnamese spirit, and Nam, the South, and the word for male. Vietnam has long seemed a land torn between its own desires and the shadows of colonialism cast over its collective mind. What emerges is a people, bruised and weary, with a soul aching for a reckoning, for the right to name their own longings.

It is often described in a pledge to our parents:

Công cha như núi Thái Sơn, nghĩa mẹ như nước trong nguồn chảy ra.

The father’s devotion stands like Thái Sơn, a mountain unmoving; the mother’s patience flows like water, endless as a spring.

But what happens when patience turns…

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raising my hand at the q&a and asking what happened

Review by Robert Daniels ★★★★½ Liked

The writer/director Truong Minh Quy’s “Viet and Nam” is absolutely hypnotic. It begins in a coal mine; Viet (Dao Duy Bao Dinh) and Nam (Pham Thanh Hai) are sweaty and exhausted—their shirts are wide open. The pair are secretly lovers. We will return many times to their infatuation and their persistent lovemaking amid the sparkling specks of coal that fill their lungs and their hearts with the same intensity as their love. Often recalling “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” Quy’s lithe script still manages to brim with symbolism, parsing the lasting effects the Vietnam War still has on the country. [full dispatch via RogerEbert]

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Ear wax picking is the greatest gesture of love between two Asians <3

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I will call it out now: MASTERPIECE. Very much in the vein of Apichatpong, this is queer slow cinema in its most visceral form. And not just this, it is also a story about Vietnam: it’s war time past and economic present. Intertwining and flowing freely, finding images and visions never seen before - from campy kink to spiritual archaeology, it is in all in there.

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Debaixo da caverna, entre as paredes escuras de uma mina de carvão, surgem dois corpos entrelaçados pelo desejo, em meio ao calor da pele, onde a luz do mundo não alcança e onde a terra, em sua essência mais densa, guarda segredos antigos. Entre o corpo físico e o espiritual existe algo místico que se divide entre dois lados, é difícil notar com os olhos ou até acreditar, mas quando paramos de tentar enxergar apenas o físico, um mundo novo se expande através dessa fronteira, parte dessa história, em sua grande essência, vai de encontro ao cotidiano, vidas transitando por lugares e sentimentos complexos, ando pela quietude até os grandes questionamentos da vida, porém, se integrar a esse mundo quase…

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Thoughts of my father stay ON during sex

Review by Rafa Sales Ross ★★★★½ Liked

There were moments in this gorgeous, gorgeous film where I could feel my brain working double time to hold on to the beauty of those images just a little longer.

Review by Shivu Gowda ★★★½ Liked

Definitely a movie that requires you to lock in and commit, but I think it's really worth it.

Review by Matt Neglia ★★★½ Liked

VIET AND NAM is endlessly entrancing in its artistry. A subdued love story also functioning as a rumination on the ghosts of the past. Despite its slow pace, Truong Minh Quy delivers quietly impressive directorial work, from the story’s narrative ambition, exquisite shot composition, tenderness & political reflections. An underrated film at the festival worth seeking out.

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Delved into the archival-psychological landscape of identity and tragedy, Minh Quy's queer romance as well as generational and national lamentation elicits the picture of communal desolation and personal endurance. Reverie of ruminations and impressive cinematic sensibilities in hand, the psycho-panoramic shade of "Viet and Nam" reflects a meld of authentic and abstract odyssey into identity, immigration misery and love-loss dynamics reflected through literal-emotional ing of a distressed nation and its people.

Review by Kai Perrignon ★★★★ Liked

Super sexy and so sad. I thought there couldn’t be a more romantic scene than the flippant wiping and licking of anal blood in the depths of the mine, and then one lover ate the other’s earwax coal lump? These are men of the earth after all, of their country divided and haunted and nonetheless striving for comionate wholeness. Present, past, future, mind, body, land tangle and blur in this movie, not unlike Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia, whose final shot is evoked and sured by Trong Minh Quy in the penultimate moment when a coal mine looks like outer space in the low light until the camera tracks back and it’s a shipping container floating at sea.