287. Indian director Praveen Morchhale's fifth feature film "White Snow" (2025) (India), based on his own original screenplay: More than a film on artistic freedom, a tale of a mother promoting her only son's passion to make films and in the process realizing the power of cinema

 

In recent months, two feature films set in the Union Territory of Ladakh, (a part of the former Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir) were released: Maisam Ali's In Retreat (2024, in Hindi language and local dialects) followed by Praveen Morchhale's White Snow (2025, in Urdu language). Both films presented different reflective scenarios faced by two different Ladakhi families in contemporary Ladakh--the first set in semi-urban settings close to Ladakh's capital Leh, while the latter film transported the viewer to the less-populated rural parts of the state, where even electric power for the homes can be unreliable. 

The first half hour of White Snow recalls the two pillars of Morchhale's previous four films--family bonding and persistence to excel in a chosen path by the lead character(s)--in this case, a Ladakhi young man, Ameer, obsessed with the idea of becoming an appreciated Ladakhi filmmaker, having made a 14-minute short film eponymously called "White Snow," based on tales related to his widowed mother's delivery of a child in snow-covered Ladakh. While the initial local responses to the short film within the film are positive, the local Mullah finds the sequence of the childbirth with the child covered in blood religiously unacceptable for public screening. Following the Mullah's publicly communicated views, the local administration curbs further screenings of the short film to avoid a possible law-and-order situation. Even after the innocent filmmaker pleads with local administrator that all humans are born covered in blood, he is subsequently arrested and tortured by the police to figure out if the sequence was mischievously added to stoke riots. 

What follows in the longer, latter section of White Snow is amazing, as it goes well beyond stifling of creative freedom by government authorities and Mullahs. Director Morchhale shifts gears in his style and tale to present a road film that recalls works of the late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. (The cinematographer of White Snow is Morchhale's favorite lensman Iranian Mohammad Reza Jahapanah.) The imprisoned Ameer does not reappear in the film. Ameer's mother, Fatima (Madhu Kandhari), who had not shown any interest thus far in her son's film or of his dream to be a filmmaker, suddenly takes it on herself to make a solo effort to show her son's film by trekking to far away places in rural Ladakh. From the tale that presented misplaced religious fervor and over-zealous police officials curbing an innocent film presenting reality, the film transforms into a road journey of a single mother taking on herself an incredible perseverance to show the banned short film, based on her own life, in distant villages of Ladakh she had never visited before. She borrows a cathode-ray TV and related equipment to screen her son's short film captured on a DVD--materials all loaded on a beautiful, domesticated yak. (Morchhale's yak is beautiful compared to the yak in the 2019 Bhutanese film Lunana-a Yak in the Classroom.)

Ameer's mother treks through Ladakh's countryside
with her domesticated yak loaded with a cathode-tube TV 
and other materials required to show her son's film,
using a DVD copy

Sometimes there is an audience 
but no electricity

What Morchhale has done in the beautiful second half of White Snow would make any fervent filmgoer recall a 1977 Canadian feature film classic J.A. Martin, photographe, screened at the1978 Filmotsav (Film Festival) in Madras (now Chennai). In the Canadian film, J.A. Martin, an ardent still-photographer would leave his family home and set-off each year alone on a horse-driven wagon, early in the 20th century, carrying his photographic equipment to take still pictures of these families living in desolate spots of Canada. Those families would treasure Martin's photographs. Martin reminds one of Morchhale's Ameer, who also is passionate, not on photography, but on filmmaking, though a century and several continents separate the two fictional characters. In the Canadian film, Martin's wife who never shared her husband's passion before, one fine year decides to join her husband on his travels and it opens her eyes to her husband's interest in still photography and the immense gratitude of families he met in far away places for taking their family photographs. Martin's wife is comparable to Ameer's mother, also travelling to far away places experiencing the love of strangers, who see their own parallel experiences in life in Ameer's short film and exude gratitude for having watched the short film. Both Martin's wife and Ameer's mother recognize the power of visual arts in their journeys to far away places and meeting strangers--a wife comes closer to her husband and a mother comes closer to her imprisoned son. The Canadian film swept most of the national Canadian film awards of 1977 and won the Best Actress award and the Ecumenical Jury award at Cannes that year.

Ameer's mother's feeble attempt at publicizing
her son's film on the road

Ameer's mother Fatima (Madhu Kandhari)
figuring out ways to show her son's film

The most important departure for Morchhale in White Snow is its ending. Morchhale's previous works spoon-fed its audiences with simple narratives. The end sequence in White Snow with a police jeep, the family yak of Ameer stranded alone on a river bridge, and Ameer's mother missing from camera view forces the viewer to think and figure out the film's end for oneself.

P.S. Several films of Praveen Morchhale have been reviewed on this blog: Widow of Silence (2018); Walking with the Wind (2017); and Barefoot to Goa (2013). These can be accessed by clicking on their names in this post-script. The Canadian classic film J.A. Martin, photographe (1977) can be accessed on the National Film Board of Canada website by clicking on its name in this post-script.

286. Vietnamese film director Pham Ngoc Lan's debut feature film "Cu Li Never Cries" (Cu Li khong bao gio khoc) (2024) (Vietnam), based on his original screenplay, co-authored with Ngiehm Qyunh Trang: Intelligently interplaying time with history, tradition and family life in unified Vietnam as two ordinary Vietnamese lovers decide to get married

"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 sad, yet beautiful eyes of the slow loris,
carried around by Van's aunt in a bag

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 one), 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 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.)