Just
alone for the sake of the science fiction-genre, Nguyen´s film is
very interesting. Made in a film country from where we had very few
chances to see films on a festival – not to mention on the big
screen. To make today a science fiction film is a tricky thing (which
is one reason to admire Nguyen´s courage) There are a lot of traps.
There is the "high art" of Tarkovsky´s Solaris and
Kubrick´s 2001:
A Space Odyssey and
very often generated Blockbuster Science Fiction.
Nuoc takes
place in the not too far away future. The warming of the earth´s
climate caused catastrophic floods. Countries in Southern Asia like
Vietnam are heavily affected. For the majority of the surviving
population, life is only possible on boats or wooden houses built on
on long stilts.
At
the beginning we see a young woman in her long and slim boat. She
arrives at the police station picking up the corpse of her husband.
He is drowned they tell her, an explanation she doubts. The films
jumps back in time several times, to times she spent with her husband
and faraway back to the time she met him first time and how both of
them fell in love. A few years before the apocalypse, the woman owned
a fancy coffee shop. A few years later they have nearly everything
lost. The land they still own is under water, the culture is almost
limited in strategies to survive.
Beside
the love story and the Science Fiction aspect, there is also a
thriller element. The late husband of this woman invented a gen
manipulated seed which can grow with sea water. Is he killed by the
company which breeds on big swimming islands of steel the rare
vegetable?
The
interesting thing is the mixing of genres framed into a post
apocalyptic science fiction frame. The flashbacks before the disaster
are clashing against the present, a time of loss, the hope for a
better future (in which the water goes back) clashes with the strong
feeling that the disaster caused by the climate change is just at its
beginning.
Well
as Vietnam is a very young film country with a very limited
production of feature films and very seldom screened on big festival,
this was one of the first films on my screening schedule.
I
am not yet sure if this combination with Hard Science fiction, love
story and thriller works always. But in general and especially as an
unconditional admirer of Dang Nhat Minh, my favorite Vietnamese
director, I am very attracted especially by aspects we in the west
would call “half-baked”. Nuoc for example has
partly serious ambition last but not least about the threat of a
climate disaster but in this film there is as well a delight for
opulent genre cinema, revealed in often impressing Cinema scope
images. That here like so often in nearly all Vietnamese films I have
seen again a woman is the central character, is a very sympathetic
convention of Vietnamese cinema. The heroine played by Quynh Hoa
stays in my memory, because she is not only beautiful but more
important- very convincing as a young woman who struggles for
surviving but also has to deal with her big losses.
I
am not sure but it can be possible that Nuoc is the
the first Science Fiction film in Vietnamese film history. I often
think that not only in the masterpieces by Dang Nhat Minh – that
certain categories like genre films and art house cinema does not
really exist in this national cinema. The relatively marginal
existence of Vietnamese cinema, seldom invited to big festival is not
really justified.
I
saw Nuoc quite at the beginning of my festival
covering and until just a few hours ago, I thought it was interesting
but I let it go. Well, the film, some images, impressions came back.
And strangely I feel the desire to watch it another time. For now I
have to be lucky enough not to have overlooked this strange cinematic
creature which does not really let me go yet.
Rüdiger
Tomczak
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