A young man, trying to reconnect with the land of his birth, finds love and truth in embracing who he is…
Being an alien in your own country is a weird thing. You know you belong but at the same time, you feel disconnected. You try and reconnect with the familiar but the world has already moved on. Remove a person from their world for long enough and they acquire new attitudes and beliefs. Return them back and they struggle to reconnect. For Kit, returning to his home country of Vietnam after spending his formative years in England is both alienating and soul recharging. He arrives to scatter his parent’s ashes now that his mother has died and he’s expected as the big brother to figure out the ins and outs of the country before his younger brother and his family arrives.
The first time we see Kit (Henry Golding) interact with someone, it’s his cousin and his aunt and it is awkward. There’s a pain in the scene where Kit suddenly realises how much distance lies between him and his extended family. He even berates himself to his brother afterwards as he realises how trite his conversation was. Nothing looks the same as it did for him when he was a boy, he no longer speaks the language, and the Vietnam he and his family fled no longer exists. The film spends a correct amount of time with Henry Golding’s initial performance being like a person swimming into the deep end for the first time. He pauses and hesitates at junctions, not knowing how to be himself. Director Hong Khaou (Lilting) keeps using a motif in the film of Kit being taxied to various places in Vietnam by motorbike or scooter and as the film goes on and he learns how to ‘swim’ in his new environment, the blank expression he has on these bike rides turns serene as he starts to remember and embrace the country he left and the person he was. He stops staring into the background and starts seeing the world around him. The film, in turn, is less about rediscovery and more about how Kit sees himself. He spends more time with his cousin and starts asking questions to things his parents never spoke of. He remembers his life with his parents and what Vietnam was like. The film is contending with the past of Vietnam when it talks about Kit’s parents and why they left Vietnam. Kit is removed from this because he doesn’t recognise the Vietnam he was born in this new country. But the film makes its case without the cliche ‘Everything about Vietnam revolves around the War’ when it probes into the past with Kit.
But when he meets American expat Lewis (Parker Sawyers) through an online app, his sexual and romantic relationship with Lewis takes Kit into places in his personality that he didn’t realise were there. When he is with Lewis, it is the future of Vietnam that calls to him. Lewis helps Kit to see that the country has moved on from its warring past and is more upbeat and cosmopolitan. Along the way, Kit meets Linh (Molly Harris) who, like Lewis, sees Vietnam as moving forward. Through her interactions with Kit, we see the future of the country wrestling with whether or not the traditions of the past are worth holding onto. Kit is able to be more open with Lewis and Linh than he could with his family (it’s implied that Kit hides his sexual orientation from his cousin and aunt). He stops thinking of his homeland as a mystic, remote country and more as it is a part of his personality as much as his life in England was. By this point, Golding’s performance has changed as he wrestles with his own personality problems. He opens up more, talks more, and asks questions whereas before, he would have stayed silent and endured the silence. By the end of the film, Kit has resolved the conflict within himself about how he feels about the places he finds himself in, the world his parents came from, and what direction he wants to go in.
The film’s performances are very natural and understated. Sawyer’s performance as Lewis is remarkable as his character feels the weight of what his country did to Kit’s home but this isn’t used in their relationship but more to do with how Lewis views the people of Vietnam as a whole. Molly Harris’ turn as Minh is a very specific performance. She gives a voice to the struggle of young people everywhere (but especially here) as they try to make their way while respecting tradition to an extent that they know why their parents want to do things in a particular way. The most amazing performance aside from these and Golding’s is David Tran as Kit’s cousin, Lee. His turn is quiet reflection, a mirror image of Kit, focusing on how he goes with the flow of something. Lee is traditional but also knows that Kit feels disconnected. He doesn’t completely understand the reasons why but he never looks down on Kit’s uncomfortableness. It’s a very nuanced performance and well played. Golding as Kit feels very organic in his paralysis as he first arrives and later, as he travels the country, he becomes more confident of himself and how he expresses himself. At times he feels like a tourist and acts like one and in other scenes, he holds off on asking the obvious question and lets whatever happens to unfold.
Monsoon is both a look at how people view themselves but also how they view the places they came from and the people who were with along the way.
Monsoon screened as part of the 2020 East Asia Film Festival Ireland, and is released in the UK and Irish cinemas and on Digital from 25 September 2020 by Peccadillo Pictures.
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