Viet and Nam premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year before taking its bow at TIFF…
Viet and Nam hit the festival circuit earlier this summer when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. Competing for the coveted Queer Palm but ultimately losing that prize, the film has gone on to great acclaim with critics and audiences that get the chance to see it during its festival run. Director Truong Minh Quy’s epic drama about two coal miners falling in love is a blend of history and 2000’s era queerness that has rocked the country of Vietnam to its core.
It should be noted that the movie has been banned in its native Vietnam, but international audiences are slowly coming around to screening the Viet and Nam. The movie will have its North American premiere at TIFF this week as it seeks distribution to other countries after its festival journey.
IN Magazine had the opportunity to speak to Truong Minh Quy ahead of TIFF’s presentation of Viet and Nam.
The Vietnamese Cinema Department cited the film’s “gloomy, deadlocked, and negative view” as a reason for its ban in Vietnam. What compelled you to explore these darker themes in Viet and Nam, and how do you view the balance between art and state-imposed censorship?
I think for me, the decision to ban my film was an extreme decision, and I think the cinema department has seen the film from an ideological point of view, not from the artistic, poetic point of view. [Their] conclusion is that the film is a negative portrait of the country, which it is not for me.
When you see the movie, we understand that it is trying to say something about this long lasting coma of history, which is not only happening in Vietnam, but many countries have that. In the end, it’s a personal, emotional response. I don’t know how to justify the censorship or the banning in Vietnam, because I think for a filmmaker, I would like to have this kind of innocent mind. I shouldn’t put myself in the place of the censorship, because otherwise I will start to see and to think like them. I really think that the motivation behind the censorship is fear. It’s kind of an illogical fear.
The film features a mix of naturalism and expressionism, such as the surreal depiction of the coal mine as a starry sky during a love scene. How did you decide on this visual approach, and what do you hope it conveys about the characters’ internal worlds?
The visual of a starry night, which is inside the coal mines, I think it started after the scouting. So we went down to the real coal mines, and then down there, you couldn’t see anything but the darkness. You can see the cold, glittering in the dark, which is very beautiful. So I think the combination of that glittering cold and the dark surroundings is somehow romantic. Because it’s so dark, we can imagine wherever we want to be, either a coal mine or a dark night or even in outer space. The darkness enhances the imagination to give the romantic feelings between Viet and Nam the core of their relationship.
Nam and Viet face difficult choices in their relationship, especially when Nam considers emigrating. How did you approach developing their relationship?
The two of them are gay, but I didn’t want to make the movie a gay theme about gay characters struggling with their relationship. First, we have these two young men who fall in love. We can see through the gestures, the caring gestures towards each other, and we understand that one is going to leave the country and one will stay. They have this kind of conflict and tension, but we also have this metaphorical connection to history, to the lost fathers. The film’s theme doesn’t portray the gayness as a necessary topic, but at the same time, there is a certain awareness of the reality. Even though the film tries not to say how that relationship is not really accepted, it gives some hints to that.
Looking back on the process of making Viet and Nam, what has been the most challenging aspect for you as a filmmaker, and what do you feel most proud of in the final product?
I think what was most difficult and also the one that I am proud of is the same thing: shooting in Vietnam. The film had such a small budget that we shot in 45 days. The locations were spread all over Vietnam from north to south. In Vietnam, we have to import everything from overseas. We had several countries involved that had crews helping to make this film a reality.
The performances in the film are intense and deeply emotional. How did you work with the main two actors to achieve such nuanced portrayals of Viet and Nam?
I honestly didn’t work much in terms of acting, because the way I approached the film is not to focus so much on character. Firstly, they are not actors, and most of the performances on screen were non-professional actors. I was searching for a real presence that you can feel from a person when you just look at that person in reality and in daily life. I tried to keep that feeling as something inside of that person and to try to bring the character close to that kind of presence already inside of the actor.
What do you hope audiences take away from Viet and Nam when the credits begin to roll in the end?
I’ve seen so many reviews saying the film is so gloomy, so dark, and so sad. But honestly, I don’t think it is a sad film. If we look closely, the ending encompasses everything in terms of emotion, in terms of future, past, and also it elevates to the level of a mythological story. I really hope the audience sees the movie more in that way than more in the sad ending, something like that.
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