Even a hardened film critic occasionally leaves their phone on ‘silent’ only to be tortured with bone-deep embarrassment at the staggeringly unquiet buzzbuzzbuzz.
A strange reckoning with this most mundane of agonies sparks a spiritual odyssey in US-based Vietnamese director Pham Thien An’s astonishing Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, which deservedly won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival.
A drifting soul, wedding videographer Thien (Le Phong Vu) appears all alone in the world, even when sitting with mates in a packed roadside food court in Saigon teeming with people (and, briefly, portentous rain). Turning his back on the sorry aftermath of a head-on motorbike crash that leaves two dead and one young boy perplexingly unscathed, this traumatic vision dramatically halts the film’s expansive one-shot opening sequence. Shrugging it off and heading to a massage parlour, that unmistakable buzzbuzzbuzz persistently disturbs the masseur. “Are you not answering because it’s your girlfriend?” she asks. He jokes that it’s God calling.
In fact, it’s the hospital. Thien’s sister-in-law was riding one of those bikes, his adorable young nephew Dao (Thinh Nguyen) was now essentially an orphan with his father long absent. And so Thien quietly folds the grieving young boy into his listless days. But Saigon cannot contain this heartache, with Thien setting off for the rural village of his childhood to find his missing older brother and reunite him with his son.
A three-hour film with a meditative and, at times, trippy pace, this isn’t one to watch while fiddling with your phone. You need to surrender to its grace and savour its mesmerising metaphysical musings. The too-soon funeral of a shiveringly small, nest-fallen baby bird will hit as hard as that of any human. A herd of sleek black buffalo startled at the unseen (us?) on a jungle track is as entrancing as a half-glimpsed statuette (Jesus?) swaddled in undulating river reeds or fluttering pale butterflies dancing in a mist-enveloped dawn.
As rich with visual flourish as any Wong Kar-wai film, Yellow Cocoon Shell has the aching heart of light and darkness of Kamila Andini’s veil-parting The Seen and Unseen, all exquisite framing, sublime lighting, ethereal sound design and attention to minuscule detail. Dinh Duy Hung’s light-footed cinematography perfectly aligns with Pham’s remarkable grasp on how an edit gifts life to the invisible space beyond the cut.
Listen deep to the wise word of an old woman in a cafe that may have closed long ago when she asks of Thien’s voyage into the unknown, “Why are you looking for him now?” There are no simple answers in Yellow Cocoon Shell, only the soul-rewarding beauty of the unknown once you let go of that buzzbuzzbuzz.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is screening as part of MIFF 2023. The film is also available to purchase on MIFF Play until August 27; find out more about times and dates here.
