Movie Review - Monsoon (Outfest 2020)

Hong Khaou was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his film Lilting (2014), which was one of the best films of the year in my estimation. It made me eager to see the follow-up to his feature debut. Similar to his debut, this film's inciting incident is the death of the protagonist's loved one or family member. Similar to Lilting as well, this film is about that protagonist dealing with the loss and aftermath of that death. This film is inherently a different experience because Lilting was about how the protagonist had to engage with another person. This film isn't about how the protagonist has to engage with another person. It's more about how he has to reconcile the loss with the past and do it by himself. This is a much more lonely experience. Obviously, there have been a lot of great films about loneliness and lonely characters. Those films though give their lonely characters a lot more to do than Khaou gives his character here. It's easy when the lonely character is in a fight for survival and sanity, such as the case in Cast Away (2000) or All Is Lost (2013).

It's more difficult, if it's just a person in mourning or dealing with grief who simply decides to isolate himself mostly. It has been done well, such as in Tom Ford's A Single Man (2009) or even Manchester By the Sea (2016). Those films weren't as quiet in terms of dialogue as this is. This film is also way more quiet than Lilting. Of course, the quiet is authentic and real. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't make for very exciting cinema when large chunks of it are the protagonist not doing anything but quietly dealing with mourning and grief, alone in hotel rooms. It also doesn't help that Khaou doesn't give his protagonist anything that makes him as a character particularly exciting, which is a more authentic and true-to-life thing, but it can also make the film a bit dull.

Henry Golding (The Gentlemen and Crazy Rich Asians) stars as Kit, a British citizen who was brought to the United Kingdom when he was six from Vietnam. His parents escaped during the Vietnam War. Kit hasn't been back to Vietnam in 30 years, but he returns because his mother has recently passed. His father has been dead and he thinks it would be a good idea if he spreads their ashes in their native land of Vietnam. The film is about his trip to Vietnam, attempting to find a place essentially to bury his parents or spread their ashes.

This doesn't constitute a spoiler, but there is basically no resolution to this premise. I understand that the point of the film is to unlock and explore something else, but the fundamental premise is ultimately abandoned. We never learn where he will bury his parents or spread their ashes. The point of the film though is less about what Kit is technically there to do and it's more about this immigrant reconnecting with a land and a culture from which he was ripped. If one has seen Alan Yang's Tigertail (2020), this film is a good companion piece. Yang's film more goes into the history, depicting why the immigrants left, the disconnect that happened and how the protagonist had to reconnect but through his relationship with someone else. Khaou's film has the potential for that reconnect but doesn't quite land it. Yang's film boils it down to a father and his daughter. Here, Khaou could have boiled it down to a young man and his brother or maybe a young man and his male lover, but not quite.

Parker Sawyers (World on Fire and Southside With You) co-stars as Lewis, a American, clothing designer who is in Vietnam managing his own company. He's gay and he meets Kit on an online app. They become attracted and have sex a couple of times. There's something there that feels like it might have some greater meaning or significance to Kit, but that's not really the case. The romance between Lewis and Kit is cute and the romance here mostly breaks up what otherwise would be a man trying to walk down memory lane though having no memory, so it's just monotony.

As with Khaou's previous film, Lilting, he seems to be playing with memory. Kit visits various places in Vietnam and it's supposed to spark memories of his time there before his family was forced to leave. Khaou's film though never weighs it with the kind of emotional weight or gravitas as he did with Lilting. Nothing about Kit's journey and search for his memories ever hit or impressed me as things in Lilting did. One of his memories seems like it was pulled out of Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father (2017), which I hoped might spark a sequence depicting the harrowing events of Kit's early life, but whatever excitement was there fell flat or was conveyed in too much of a muted way to impact me.

Going back to Lewis, there is an aspect here that picks up on ideas in films like Eytan Fox's Walk on Water (2005) or recently in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods (2020). Lewis says his father was a soldier who fought in Vietnam. Coming back to Vietnam, he says he feels guilt about what was done to the Vietnamese and the legacy or trauma that was left behind. It's merely brought up and then brushed over, as if the film doesn't really want to reckon with those ideas. Lee's film does or at least goes further than Khaou who merely scratches the surface. Fox's film isn't about Vietnam but instead World War II, yet the same idea is explored, that of the legacy and psychical trauma of war.

Not Rated but contains sexual situations.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 25 mins.

Streamed through OutfestNow.