"They say live in the now as much as you can. But the past returns regardless. Un-whole. Fragmented. Existing in pieces of experience."
--- words spoken, underscoring the importance of time, by the elderly aunt of the young lady, Van, who wants to get married, following an unplanned pregnancy
"Rivers can dry up. Mountains can crumble. But you never change."
--words spoken, by the aunt, underscoring the mindset of elderly individuals (such as her former colleague) in unified Vietnam, who subscribe to the old ideology of the North, singing/enjoying patriotic songs
Debut feature films by young filmmakers, especially those with original screenplays, are fascinating ever since writer-director Orson Welles made Citizen Kane in 1941. Young Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lan treads the same path decades later with his first feature film made in 2024, where he too, like Welles, has a collaborator (Nghiem Quynh Tranh) on his debut film's script. The film Cu Li Never Cries, though packaged as a bitter-sweet tragi-comedy of the working-class contemporary, unified Vietnam, offers multilayered perspectives of the past, present and future of Vietnamese citizens and their country's tumultuous history. There are occasions when the film resembles a threnody--a song or a lamentation for the dead. At the same time in the film, the elders wistfully look at their past errors in judgement, and wish the younger generation to move forward without repeating the mistakes of their elders.
Two generations of Vietnam are presented. The first generation saw life in Communist East Germany to be fascinating and emigrated there. The elderly lady, whose husband lived there, has died and she returns to Vietnam from Germany, after a recent trip, with her dead husband's ashes and her husband's pet--a pygmy, slow loris monkey--to her modest living space in Hanoi, which she shares with her young-orphaned niece, Van. Van earns a living as a nanny looking after a few tiny tots, while their biological parents are at work.
 |
| Van baby-sits two toddlers as a nanny in her apartment, to earn an income. Her amputated left arm is never discussed, but could be a subtle link to the Vietnam war, as probably was her parents' death. |
The film presents the mindset of two contrasting generations in contemporary Vietnam. The recently widowed aunt of Van has brought home the urn containing her dead husband's ashes to be immersed in the river water as per Vietnamese tradition. The younger generation of Van and her partner, merely involves the elders of the family in a quickly arranged betrothal. The rest of the marriage imitates a Caucasian wedding process, though the newlyweds are not Christians, complete with gowns, westernized wedding dresses, songs and dances. Even the elder generation has evolved to enjoy slow ball-dancing as entertainment in the evening of their lives and the widow attracts a young waiter to dance with her, with her pet slow loris perched on his shoulder--perhaps providing a link to her dead husband in her mind.
The screenplay uses the presence of the uninvited slow loris in a creative way to link several strands of the film's structure. Nobody cries in the film. The cinematographer makes us aware of the animal's cute eyes--sad, yet beautiful.
 |
| The dwarf slow loris peers from behind a flower pot at humans in the room |
A broken metal rib of the aunt's umbrella is a clever detail added by the director/scriptwriter to allegorically show her fractured life of past mistakes and present widowhood. The bride is unsure of her future and disappears for a while from the wedding banquet realizing that she is possibly leaving her aunt who had not been happy to learn of the quick decision to marry but the aunt goes searching and finds her, only to present her with the aunt's own necklace as a tacit well-considered final approval of the wedding from the older generation to the newer one. This sequence presents the future of the tale. (The necklace finds pride of place in the film's official poster above.)
The slow loris is called Cu Li, which in many Asian countries resembles the word "coolie'' for a lowly paid worker, who rarely talks back to the master. The sequence in the film where Cu Li is perched on the waiter's shoulder when the widowed, lonely aunt asks the waiter to dance with her serves as a visual, wistful reminder of her past life. Cu Li possibly is the visual link to the missing presence of her dead husband with whom she possibly danced in the past. The slow loris, when scared, sweats a toxic liquid, which when the animal licks mixes with its saliva can cause pain/allergic reaction to humans. The kids under the care of Van, the nanny, must have scared Cu Li, and subsequently get skin rashes. Van is upset that Cu Li is sick and "infecting" the kids. Full grown slow lorises are found in thick forests in Vietnam and rarely adopted as pets. The dwarf Cu Li observes quietly the bitter, sweet human tale unfolding around its urban environment as a human would.
 |
| Van's recently widowed aunt dances with an obliging, young waiter who places the dwarf slow loris, Cu Li, on his shoulder. Later, in the film, she passes off the waiter, as her son she never had, to her former colleague. |
The rich narrative of the film is sprinkled with subtle humor. The widowed aunt's former colleague shows off an imposing statue of Ho Chi Minh, looking over a dam that has tamed the Black River, causing some parts of it to run dry, while elsewhere the river dam generates electric power before the residual water flows to merge with those of the Red River, ultimately flowing into the sea. The humorous part of the description includes an aside about the re-positioning of Ho Chi Minh's arm on the statue on account of its weight, which gives the final gesture a different meaning than was originally intended. Earlier in the film young men, including the groom, having a late night picnic, discuss with crude humor the linguistic differences between the populations of the south and north Vietnam.
The film was made on a shoestring budget. Though shot in color, the final black-and-white version was arrived at to trim post-production costs, according to the director, while meeting the press at the Berlin Film Festival 2024, where the film won the best debut film award.
While Cu Li Never Cries is not comparable with debut masterpieces such as Citizen Kane, Sir Ridley Scott's oft-unsung film The Duelists (1977) or Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Silence de la Mer (Silence of the sea) (1949), it is a laudable attempt of a young filmmaker to team up with another screenplay writer to look at their country's history and weave a story that provides a poetic perspective of preserving memory, complete with Van's amputated arm and the death of her parents (a likely indirect reference to the past war years), and Vietnam's fauna, while living reconciling completely with the present day unified Vietnam.
Recent debut films from three different Vietnamese directors are notable: Ash Mayfair's The Third Wife (2018), winner of the Gold Hugo award at the Chicago international film festival, Best Film award at the Kolkata International Film Festival, and minor awards at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals; Thien An Pham's Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023), winner of the Golden Camera award at the Cannes film festival, the Roberto Rossellini award for the best film at Pingyao International Film Festival (China) and the Best Asian Film award at the Singapore International Film Festival; and finally Pham Ngoc Lan's Cu Li Never Cries (2024), winner of the GWFF Best Feature Film award at the Berlin Film Festival, winner of the Shaji N Karun award for the Best Asian Debut Film at the 20th International Film Festival of Thrissur, winner of the Best Picture award in international competition at the Jeonju International Film Festival (South Korea), winner of the Best Performance award at the Las Palmas Film Festival (Spain) for lead actress Minh Chau (playing the widowed aunt), winner of the NETPAC award for Best Asian First Film at the QCinema International Film Festival, winner of a special mention at the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (Romania), Vietnamese cinema is indeed on the march with these three young filmmakers leading a revival of a new kind. Coincidentally, both The Third Wife and Cu Li Never Cries share the same film editor: Julie Beziau.
This critic was the chairperson of the main jury of the 20th International Film Festival of Thrissur (India) that awarded the inaugural Shaji N Karun Award for the Best Asian Debut Film to Cu Li Never Cries. The citation of the award bestowed by the festival jury also highlights the editing of the film.
P.S. Four debut films mentioned in the above review have been discussed in detail earlier on this blog: The Duelists (1977); La Silence de la Mer (1949); The Third Wife (2018); and Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023). (Click on the names of the films mentioned in the post-script to access the reviews.)
