Jewel of the Desert
The question of the title, or what the film means, is still open; but it’s a stunningly serene debut feature from 34 year old Vietnamese born, Houston based Thien An Pham. The film is a jewel of slow cinema that takes place initially in Saigon and then moves to the mountainous central highlands; it is a zero gravity epic quest, floating towards its odd narrative destiny and then perhaps floating up over that towards something else. It’s spiritual, compassionate, intimate and mysterious in ways that reminded me of Tsai Ming liang or Edward Yang.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is presented in an unforced style of calm realism with many long, unbroken middle distance shots; closeups are rare. There is a flashback and a dream sequence presented in exactly the same way, which gives you that woozy feeling that past and present reality and reverie are all folding in on each other.
Explicit emotion may be withheld but there is no preventing a fiercely erotic kissing scene or a moment where a young woman tells someone about her adoration for Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life and wonders aloud: “Why can’t they make movies like that any more?” I can actually imagine Bob Rafelson making this film in 1972 (at half this length) with exactly the same narrative structure, the same elements of mid-life male crisis and regret.
In the noisy city centre Thien (Le Phong Vu) is having an unhurried conversation with his friends about religious faith and the meaning of life at an outdoor cafe when they are shocked by an ear-splitting motorbike crash just yards away. His later session at a massage parlour is tragically disrupted by his phone going off. The fatality in that crash turns out to have been his sister in law Hanh whose five year old son Dao (Nguyen Thinh) miraculously survived. Now it is Thien’s duty to take Hanh’s coffined body in a rented van to her home village for burial (with little Dao as well).
This, too, is his own home village and that of his brother Tam, who ran out on Hanh and his son years ago. He must have some kind of reckoning with Thao (Nguyen Thi Truc Quynh), a young woman from that village with whom he once had an understanding; she could help him do something about poor little Dao whose grief about his mother can only be guessed at. He must also find his runaway brother and what? Break the news? Use this tragedy as a route to reconciliation? Or make sense of his own life and the world’s indifference?
The camera drifts and turns with the slow deliberation of an aircraft carrier: characters will move out of shot and keep talking off screen until the camera catches up with them and they are back in the frame. A still tableau will turn out to be an almost imperceptibly slow zoom. Thien has arresting encounters: an old man who once fought with the South Vietnamese at the Battle of Vung Rô, an old woman who is as enigmatic as a wraith. One entire sequence is simply Thien’s viewpoint, in silence, as he drives on his motor-scooter down roads where the headlights of oncoming traffic flare into a screen filling dazzle
Does Thien have a nervous breakdown? Or do these recent tragically sad events just express the breakdown he might have had anyway? Would not he stay in his unfulfilling anonymous existence in the city, never thinking of contacting Thao or Tam again if Hanh hadn’t died? I am amazed by the bird’s-eye view intelligence of this movie.
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