Two little girls are playing in the house of their aunt. They are obsessed with collecting insects, especially ants and feeding them with sugar. The aunt is too busy with the household, the kids are on their own. Like the spoken language suggests, it is an emigrated Vietnamese family anywhere in North America. In another room, an old woman, the seriously ill lies in her bed. Even though it is not outspoken but one feels that she is going to die. An anglophone nurse is taking care of her essential needs. It is not only a film about the microcosm family but it is also a little introduction in the universe cinema where we have to find our point of view how we look at things. The camera is recording everything without knowing anything. The point of view of the little girls is guessing things without understanding the full consequences of what happens in front of their eyes. The author/director coordinates this cinematic phenomenon of different possible views. The cold accuracy of the image making apparatus finally creates the space for the human view at the visible things of this world. If the camera is the technical distanced view on the world, the offers offers as well the innocent, playful and curious view of the world. It is the transition from the technique of the apparatus into poetry. From time to time we hear the sick old woman coughing. Even the girls sense that soon things won´t be the same anymore.
The film takes place entirely in internal rooms. Beside the children and their playful exploration of the world, the adults are caught up in their daily routine. The drama, the anticipated death of the grandmother is not just yet happen. The notion remains in the background like a quiet threat.
The household itself is the metaphor for the whole film. A household must be functioning for providing the life of the family. The furniture has at first a function but the point of view of the kids transform these rooms almost into a world of wonders. One can experience the film as a strange childhood memory which absorbs us in 14 minutes, a memory which does not belong to us. But it reminds us in a very special viwe at things we had in our childhood, let me call it the natural cinematic view. All what we see, all what we experience appears a short fleeting privilege. Even though Carol Nguyen celebrates a cinema of understatement and restraint, a kind of high cultivated simplicity, the film becomes in retrospect a deeply moving experience, like a short cinematic poem about a “Search for the lost Times”. Nanitc, this enchanting little jewel is one of the most beautiful and most intense moments I experienced this year on this festival.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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