This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
Kit , a young British Vietnamese man, returns to his birth country for the first time in over 30 years. He is a stranger, a tourist to his own relatives. He recognizes very little as he and his family fled Vietnam (Saigon specifically) when he was six years old. Vietnam has changed and so has Kit. To ease pain he hooks up with people where he meets Lewis, an American whose father had fought in the war & with whom he forms a bond with. They discuss how their lives were affected deeply by the Vietnam war and they clearly bond through their pain. Kit is in the country to see if he wants to spread ashes of his mom on this country, and to do that he makes a trip from Saigon to Hanoi in search of his ancestral home. During his travels, Kit finally starts to connect to the memories of his parents and his own roots.
The film doesn't talk much but at the same time, a lot gets said in those empty glances and stares that Kit has. He sees places, homes, streets trying to jog his memories as a kid to figure out what the place should mean for him. Kit travels in awe which turns into melancholy every time. The maker s keeps a good balance of showing the modern Vietnam along with the traditions and beauty of the pre-war beauty of Vietnam. Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians fame play Kit and gives a powerful performance as a man unsure about what is place is in a country that he should feel at home. His relationship with hLewis is a tender and warm story of two people dealing with the fallout of two separate families dealing with the same horror. In tat essence, its less of a gay love story and more a story of family and individuals trying to find a place and a home. The film is slow and will not be everyone's cup of tea, but in those slow movements and shots, Vietnam has been captured so beautifully. It brought back all of my memories of my trip just over a year ago. in a very relevant and poignant scene towards the end, when Kit tells his cousin that neither of his parents ever spoke of their homeland, his cousin’s response goes to the heart of the complexity of the refugee predicament. “They went through so much to leave here, and now you bring them back?”
Films like this touch your heart but at the same time, subjects like this are something only emigrants can relate to. We all have had our reasons to leave our motherland. Do not expect entertainment from this film. IT is a sensitive portrayal of cultural displacement. (7/10)
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