aGLIFF Review: Monsoon
A return to Vietnam sees tender emotional growth
By Steve Davis, 4:20PM, Mon. Aug. 17, 2020
The always watchable Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) is the deceptively placid center of this movie about a British émigré returning to a reunified Vietnam decades after fleeing the country with his family at age six following the fall of Saigon.
For the dissimulated Kit, a gay man whose romantic relationships are measured according to the duration of a Grindr hookup, this homecoming entails some unfinished personal business (his deceased parents never spoke about the past) as he explores vaguely familiar places long dormant in the fog of memory.
Director/screenwriter Khaou evinces a keen sense of geography here, first in a bustling Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City – the bird's-eye opening shot of an ant bed of Vespa scooters and automobiles scurrying along intersecting boulevards is amazing – and then in the more provincial and less dynamic Hanoi. As the movie paces towards an open-ended conclusion, Kit’s carefully concealed inner turmoil, as suggested by the movie’s hyperbolic title, appears to downgrade into something more manageable, given the possibility of emotional commitment, courtesy of an African-American clothing entrepreneur confidently played by Parker Sawyers.
All Genders, Lifestyles, and Identities Film Festival presents aGLIFF 33: Prism streaming festival, Aug. 6-16. www.agliff.org/agliff-33.
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Jan. 19, 2024
aGLIFF, aGLIFF 2020, Monsoon, Henry Golding, Parker Sawyers
