Synopsis
In the depths of the underground coal mines, where danger awaits and darkness prevails, Nam and Việt, both young miners, cherish fleeting moments, knowing that one of them will soon leave for a new life across the sea.
In the depths of the underground coal mines, where danger awaits and darkness prevails, Nam and Việt, both young miners, cherish fleeting moments, knowing that one of them will soon leave for a new life across the sea.
越與南, Viet i Nam, Việt and Nam, Viêt and Nam, 越和南, Viet a Nam, Viet und Nam, 비엣과 남, Viet and Nam, ויאט ונאם
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…
QCINEMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL #12
Kudos to anyone who can fully understand this after just one viewing, because I certainly didn't. Will rewatch this film as soon as it becomes available on streaming platforms.
I am curious about the questions that were asked during the Q&A at the film screening last November 10. I had so many questions of my own, and I'm still upset I couldn’t secure a ticket for that date
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]
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.
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 compassionate wholeness. Present, past, future, mind, body, land tangle and blur in this movie, not unlike Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia, whose final shot is evoked and surpassed 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.
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.
Haunting in many ways. The Vietnamese title of this film “Trong Lòng Đất” translates roughly to “In the heart of the earth / land / soil”.
There’s so much complexity and layers here. Interconnections between memory, (collective) trauma through war, borders between countries and realms, violence and death, what is underground / underneath (bombs, bodies of loved ones, forbidden/taboo desires). The male lovers’ relationship almost feels paradoxical — like a horror story but also a love story, there’s a sense of thirst but it keeps raining, devotion only when it’s hidden.
The dialogue at first felt really unnatural and slow as a Vietnamese speaker — but as time goes on I see how this story is not so much a…
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, passando pela quietude até os grandes questionamentos da vida, porém, se integrar a esse mundo quase…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
The batting average for films that drop their title card long after they've started is so high, it's almost a cheat code to certifying your work as kino.