Every movie is good, somewhat, a transmission experience – a solution to the border between here and there, then and now. Watch enough of them, from all over the world, and start feeling the cheapest way to travel. Two of the finest trips that you can take in the theater now are the same saturated in Wanderlus. “Việt and NAM”, from the Vietnamese writer and director Truej Minh Quy, ventures from north to south before his view of new dangerous horizons; “Grand Tour”, from the Portuguese director Miguel Gomees, is a rural anxiety screw movie. Both, as it happens, started their own trips in 2024 Cannes Film Festival Last week, he arrived in US communication ports. Although they can barely differ more than the tone, shape and rhythm – “Grand Tour” is a motor rumor without compelled, “VIệT and NAM” the most stable – everything is no less than an invitation to seize it.
The characters of the title in “Việt and Nam” are two gay men, in the twenties, who work as a minister of mines in the northern Vietnamese village. They spend their days sweating in the underground caves, extracting coal, and when they are alone, love while giving up euphoria. You find the most surprising image VIệT (Dao Duy Bao Dinh) and NAM (PHANH HaI) closed in embracing a dirt, their bodies are lit by solid anthracet. You are afraid of their safety – even in a small town in the countryside, there are definitely less screaming and healthy places for an attempt – but Truong and Sonemoting Doan turned this rugged hideout into a vision of splendor of the choir. Lovers may be hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth, but, surrounded by countless lights, may be floating between stars.
“Việt and NAM” is full of such charming repercussions: the sequence of dreams in the beginning and hateful, simulating the texture of reality; The characters whose identities only focus through some strategic appointment of the camera. Trong, who directed two previous features (“The Tree House”, from 2019, and a documentary “The City of Mirrors”, from 2016), is planted by a single, built high, as the title indicates, overlapping interference and divisions. Việt and nam in love, but they are not separated; Nam, who is looking for a better life, wants to move out. The year 2001 – In the event of the appearance, one of them announces that the planes have struck the World Trade Center – but on the psychological point of view, the heroes are immersed earlier and in a previous tragedy.
In a dark hut, where Nam lives with his mother, Hoa (Nguyen Thi Nga), a TV that surpasses the names of the soldiers who were killed during the war, in the seventies of the last century, but their remains were never found. Among them is Nam’s father, who died, several months before Nam’s birth, fighting for Viet Kong, somewhere in the forest near the northern and southern border. Hoa goes to bed every night looking to see her late husband in her dreams; She even keeps a magazine where she writes what she convinces is letters of it regarding the place of the final resting place. Hoping to find it, Việt and NAM travel south with Hoa and ORAN, BA (Le Viet Tung), who served next to Nam’s father.
“Việt and NAM” is a series of excavations, and for all the gentle rhythms – a shot of the forest left in the wind around the rhythm of the story – it seems to reveal new secrets and paradoxes at the moment. In mines, việt and NAM are drilling and drilling with heavily that would definitely rush to their death; But they also find a shelter where they can experience love, and thus life. In their search for Nam’s father, NAM and Hoa assisted a famous psychological assistance specializing in determining the remains of the soldiers. Her plays are definitely a complex trick, but for many who have spent sorrow it may not matter. Psychic interventions appear, through the enormous power of the proposal, the famous closure scale.
But is this enough? The sad, longing look at the Hoa face, after the psyche conveyed a call from her husband, provides little clarity. Nam, for his part, must take off the remains of the conflict that ended almost before his life began. In the south, he and his companions visit the museums and the memorial. At one point, the group, while drilling in a place that Hua believes that her unique husband’s grave reveals an unruly bomb. In another movie, it may have ended, but in “VIệT and NAM”, just discover enough. The chase discovers the opposite, which is a reminder that the horrors of war are not easily disposed of.
If the weight of the past is carried on Việt and NAM, as well as the uncertain uncertainty in the future. Truong was inspired by the 2019 tragedy in which thirty -nine Vietnamese immigrants were found in a refrigerated truck in the UK, the film is indirectly hinting on these events, with an image with a harsh strength that I will leave you to discover yourself. The fans in Vietnam, unfortunately, did not have this opportunity. The Vietnamese Film Administration banned the film, citing its “dark, blocked, and negative” show. However, this sad and beautiful movie rejects itself to reject itself in pessimism. Việt and NAM village are not a stronghold of the acceptance of the stranger, but their relationship with its supporters, and between them, and it seems that men consider the threat of exposure more than inconvenience – and in one scene, an unexpected source – more than alert. A good thing also: In a movie where the presence of death seems to appear to be heavier than weights, the pure power of VIệT and Nam NAM is almost enough to keep it.
Wandering from “VIệT and NAM” to “Grand Tour” will be like a cave and jumps immediately on the Ferris wheel, train, then a steam boat, a taxi, a motorcycle, and an air roundabout, to realize, with the beginning, that each of these vehicles was a kind of time. The film was often filmed in black and white, with a splash of color from time to time, which is a great movie and shaving. It never stops, rarely slowing down, and it always seems that, amazingly, in at least two directions. It is also very romantic, although romance here is with the possibilities of the open road. “Việt and NAM” gives us a couple on the verge of separation; “Grand Tour” does the same, but with a sad development (if it is more entertaining too): its strands never appear together.
They are Edward (Gunsalo Wadington), a British civilian employee, and Mullah (Christa Alfaya), his fiancée for seven years. He no longer wants to marry Molly, if he really did it, Edward escapes from Mandalay to Rangon to Singapore to Bangkok to Sigon to Manila to Osaka to Shanghai to Chungzings. Molly follows a vibrant chase, sending a telegram asking him to wait for it, but Edward, which sometimes lacks within minutes, never do so. Between Edward’s cold feet (but fast) and Molly non -modest perseverance, sometimes playing like a living Pepé le PEW cartoon, albeit Edward, The Happyeee, is also the beet. (Gomez, one of the four senior participants, was called for the oldest inspiration, since 1930: “The respectable man in a salon:
“Grand Tour”, written by Miguel Gomez.With the permission of Mobi
The film occurs in 1918 – but this is not completely true. Is it really said in 1918 if nearly half of its articles constitute a group of non -fictional life for the life of the twenty -first century? Gomez, who won the award for Best Best Directors last year, is a skilled and enlarged fraud, such as “Tabu” (2012) and “Arabian Lights” (2015), and joy in clarity of official and temporal borders. The previous advantage of Gomez was “The Tsugua Diaries” (2021), which he participated in Moreen Vadendero, a movie that dates back to the era of the epidemic by making a movie that dates back to the era of the epidemic, and overlooked his story. As happens, “Grand Tour” is also a film of the epidemic era. Gomez and his crew began shooting at early 2020, where they collected footage across Asia in a large tour of their own; Corona virus disease Cut the things short, and the production resumed in 2022. What came out of the shooting was a rich group of Quotidian shots – from boat riding, car trips, markets, rooster and karaoke performance, and the MAH -Jongg game – which was then reported, and eventually, was embodied on the story of Edward and Molly. (The film is attributed to three photography managers – Roy Bosas, Saiium Mucdibom, Guo Liang – two editors, Telmo Churro and Pedro Filipe Marques.)
We are going, then, in a type of time malestrom, where geography is the only fixed. Edward and Molly’s mood and ideas and decisions are explained in fixed excerpts, but the narrators themselves continue to change-and the change of languages-with the continued characters’ journey. The film slips between the colonial past and the post -colonialism with the ease of Farhan. The camera may follow the feverish in the wild, just to appear almost in the same place after more than a century. At one point, Edward fled a dance in Bangkok. After we lost it in a wave of the bodies of the Pallis, Gomez held at the present time, and suddenly invited us to another plane of elaborately designed movement: a modern traffic circuit in SegeonFull of drivers and motorcycles.
This entire sequence was set on “The Blue Danube Waltz”, which is a piece, after its judicial presentation in “A Space Odyssey” (1968), it may seem useful only for the purposes of honor or satirical simulation. By playing music with eighth, however, with the finest clouds, all guides us to surrender to the seriousness and greatness of the moment. It is worth noting that he photographed the article in 1918 with Wadington and Milpiars on Soundstages. Do not make any effort to hide the loud clarity of the groups – a locomotive location, a balcony overlooking a beautiful garden – Goma is revealed in a group of bright ancient Hollywood. A scene at a hotel restaurant spread with old iris ships. Molly responds to almost every comment with Glue Building, in the vein of the classic spiral hero.
The contradiction between these moments and the shots of the present day appears on paper, and not only because of the differences between the period of period and documentary realism. In 1918, the sectors of a large scene of the ancient concession, with two high -ranking white Europeans from one country to another, and many of them are still in the grip of British rule. On the contrary, the Asian local population we see in contemporary shots – Paramege farmers, Thai car drivers, Filipino singers, and Japanese Denz – have not said time for such volatile bleeding; Some of them consider the camera with Quizzzical staring, if they admit it at all. Noticeably, although “Grand Tour” is never worn under pressure, or indicates any strain to start with it. It moves between cities and centuries, and undermines the relationship between sound and image, with malicious and miraculous liquidity.
Amid such an unrestricted play, the mind seizes repeated images. One of the most important decorations in “Grand Tour” reminds us of the spread of brides as an artistic form. In one scene, animals dance to the strings; In another, shadow dolls work on a popular story. These moments are amazing in themselves, but they also put the charming simplicity of Gomez’s styles. The dolls appear to derive their strength, partly, from the clear presence of brides; The more we see them and their efforts, the more the illusion is. So he is with “Grand Tour”, who, in refusing to hide their official layers and complex associations, becomes easier to lose. If Molly is the most sympathetic to the heroes, it is easy to sympathize with Edward when, I asked before evidence if he is heading forward, “I will respond,” I will go to the place where you take me. “
