MONSOON [2019 / 2020] [Blu-ray] [UK Release] A Thoughtful Deeply Felt Movie . . . It’s Intelligence Is A Tonic . . . Nothing Short Of Poetic!
Directed by Hong Khaou [‘Lilting’], ‘MONSOON’ is a visual and emotional tour de force with a tender performance from Henry Golding. The film is a rich and poignant exploration of the struggle for identity in a place where the past weighs heavily on the present.
Kit [Henry Golding] of films ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and ‘The Gentlemen,’ returns to Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since he was six years old when his family fled the country in the aftermath of the Vietnam-American war. Struggling to make sense of himself in a city he’s no longer familiar with, he embarks on a personal journey across the country that opens up the possibility for friendship, love and happiness.
FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 2014 Sundance Film Festival: Win: Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award for Hong Khaou (director). 2019 Athens International Film Festival: Nominated: Golden Athena Award for Best Picture for Hong Khaou (director). 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: Nominated: Crystal Globe Award for Best Picture for Hong Khaou (director). 2021 Chlotrudis Awards: Nominated: Best Cinematography for Benjamin Kracun. 2021 GLAAD Media Awards: Nominated: Outstanding Film for a Limited Release.
FILM FACT No.2: ‘MONSOON’ had its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on 29 June 2019. It was released in the United Kingdom on 25 September 2020 by Peccadillo Pictures.
Cast: Henry Golding, William Do, David Tran, Lam Anh Dao, Ho Nhi, Phan Bao Ngoc, Võ Liên, Parker Sawyers, Molly Harris, Olivia Hearn, Sap Bui, Mach Su, Edouard Leo, Nguyen Hau, Le Hoang Minh, Dinh Xuan Va, Peter Phan, Nicola Taggart, Do Phan Anh, Do Tuan Tu, Nguyen Ngoc Anh, Lâm Vissay and Nguyen Myan (uncredited)
Director: Hong Khaou
Producers: Emma Dutton, Lizzie Francke, Rebecca Joerin-Sharp, Rose Garnett and Tracy O'Riordan
Screenplay: Hong Khaou (writer)
Composer: John Cummings (original composed music)
Costume Designer: Adam Howe
Cinematography: Benjamin Kracun (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
Audio: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
English: 2.0 LPCM Stereo Audio
English: 2.0 LPCM Audio Description
Subtitles: English SDH
Running Time: 85 minutes
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 1
Studio: BBC Films / British Film Institute / Moonspun Films / Sharphouse / Peccadillo Pictures
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: In the film ‘MONSOON’ [2019] still waters run deep in the Cambodian-British director’s second feature, as Kit [Henry Golding] is a man in limbo, returning to a home he no longer recognises.
Born in Vietnam but raised in the United Kingdom, Kit is in Saigon for the first time since his parents fled after reunification, when he was eight years old – arriving as a tourist to return his parents’ ashes to their homeland. “They went through so much to leave here and now you bring them back,” says an old family friend, expressing in words the delicately observed themes of mourning, dislocation and conflicted identity that enrich Cambodian-British director Hong Khaou’s contemplative second feature film ‘MONSOON.’
‘MONSOON’ is set solely in the hustle and bustle of urban city centres with over-crowded markets and bass thumping bars; juxtaposing the refuge found in the silent haven of his minimalist hotel rooms and empty Airbnb flats. There’s none of the usual rural off-the-beaten tracks or tropical beach settings, even though the essence of lush Far East tropics is omnipresent. The sweat-inducing humidity, the constant reverberating sound of traffic, along with pervasive equatorial greenery and ubiquitous sunlight, captured precisely by Benjamin Kracun’s grandeur cinematographer measured camera movements, panning out in a mediative pace to reveal the splendour of local daily life.
Those who were enamoured of director Hong Khaou’s poignant debut film ‘Lilting’ [2014] will find much that is familiar here. Kit is a gay man who, while clearly very comfortable with his sexuality, has to reconcile that identity with the limbo of being an immigrant in his current home and a stranger in his former one. “I hardly recognise this country anymore,” he laments, having previously had to admit with embarrassment that his Vietnamese is not so good nowadays, and he’s in need of help translating.
‘MONSOON’ feels like a precisely considered expression of the untethered experience of migration – undoubtedly owing much of its pin-sharp observation to director Hong Khaou’s own personal history – and the difficulty in anchoring yourself when your life and environs seem to be a constantly roiling sea. Hardly any of this is explicitly communicated; instead, themes slowly accumulate through snatched moments of a hotel room with Skype calls, parcelled-out exposition and silent wanders through old neighbourhoods.
The camera often lingers on his face as he observes, and Henry Golding regularly conveys precisely what he’s thinking in wordless scenes that could easily lapse into a broody malaise but never do. Benjamin Kracun’s cinematography captures him in mid- and wide-shots, emphasising his position in his surroundings, or shoots him through windows to signify his isolation.
The closest Henry Golding gets to charming is in a series of romantic and sexual encounters with Lewis [Parker Sawyers], who comes with his own set of conflicted identities – he’s an African-American ex-pat living in Vietnam where his father served during the war.
Their unfolding relationship is complicated by their family histories. “I’m not one of those Yanks,” claims Lewis after Kit questions why he would want to remember the Vietnam War with pride. It’s a political undercurrent that courses through ‘MONSOON,’ further muddying the waters of the drama beneath a serene surface.
‘MONSOON’ is more eloquent about this visually than verbally. Henry Golding can suggest a swirl of conflicting emotions – loneliness, fascination, confusion – without saying a word. There isn’t all that much dialogue in ‘MONSOON,’ but what there is has the unfortunate tendency to sound overly written rather than natural. Also, a lot of it is superfluous: we didn’t need to hear Kit say ‘I feel like a tourist’ when the whole film up to that point has made that clear.
At face value ‘MONSOON’ is a stunning film, littered with gorgeous symbolic moments of everyday city life; pitting subtly against the old Vietnam, traditional scenes of lotus tea-making, against the modern-day Vietnam, a contemporary art tour of Hanoi. All positioned to discern and visualize Kit’s identity crisis and the unsettling feelings of loss of cultural heritage. As a title, ‘MONSOON’ may suggest an element of stormy denouement, a forceful clearing of the air. Although its final scenes gesture towards resolution, director Hong Khaou’s accomplishment is to suggest that such clarifications often remain elusive in life – that it’s the journey, rather than the arrival at any destination that is the real fruit of the experience. Comparatively, the characters are refreshingly comfortable in their sexuality – their connection not just a symbolic bridge but a specific, sweet dynamic between one so open and one so lost yet guarded. ‘MONSOON’ is a hopeful, considered piece of cinema, quietly revealing and careful in its resolution of this unique turmoil.
CREATING MONSOON: With ‘MONSOON,’ director Hong Khaou’s second feature film, set out to create an intimate meditation on the personal and cultural implications of displacement. Like protagonist Kit, his memories are rooted in the period he spent as a child in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). “I have always been interesting in telling a story about a person returning to a land that they had fled,” says director Hong Khaou, “so in many respects the idea for ‘MONSOON’ predates my debut feature film ‘Lifting.’
To prepare shooting the film ‘MONSOON,’ director Hong Khaou went back to the country of his childhood for the first time in thirty years, which proved to be an extremely moving experience. “The place I left was extremely poor and we lived in difficult conditions. It had changed beyond all recognition and I went through a lot of feelings going back. Like Kit, I’ve been frustrated in the past and so the writing process started to become a re-imaging of how I would of have done things in his position. Kit wants to understand his place in a culture, to try to capture a past he feels his parents denied him. There’s this romantic notion that you have to go back to your past to move forward, but there’s no definitive answer to be had from the experience, just a slight shift or change in you. You learn not to hanker for the past, but to live with it.”
MONSOON MUSIC TRACK LIST
I KNOW WHAT BOYS LIKE (Written by Chris Butler) [Performed by Kumi Solo]
SELF CONTROL (Written by Giancarlo Bigazzi, Steve Piccolo and Raffaele Riefoli) [Performed by Laura Branigan]
GLUE (Written by Andy Ferguson and Matthew McBriar) [Performed by Bicep]
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Blu-ray Image Quality – BBC Films, British Film Institute, Moonspun Films, Sharphouse and Peccadillo Pictures presents the film ‘MONSOON’ with a spectacular 1080p image and is enhanced with an amazing 2.20:1 aspect ratio. The film has very strikingly sharp details and consistent beautiful image. Much of the film takes place during bright summer days with a lot of driving sequences, and the image captures the essence of the setting with tremendous amounts of detail. Additionally, facial features and other textures are all on display gives a very natural look throughout the film. Colours are consistently vivid, and manage to capture the bright lushness of Vietnam especially out in the countryside, but also shows up the contrast of a harsh city life. Contrast remains incredibly high throughout the film producing full-bodied black levels and whites that never look overblown and also gives us very sharp images, which is helped by the amazing cinematographer Benjamin Kracun, who really knows how to shows off the countryside of Vietnam in the best possible way and especially all the spectrum of colours of the landscape in a spectacular way. All in all, this is a fantastic looking Blu-ray disc which gives you a wonderful joyous experience. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – BBC Films, British Film Institute, Moonspun Films, Sharphouse and Peccadillo Pictures brings us a wonderful 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio experience and is very driven towards dialogue that is clean and very easily heard which it does with great ease here, especially in the quiet moments in the film. The sound is primarily loaded with the very loud traffic noises and you do get some very strong ambient traffic sounds in the back speakers, to really make you feel you are actually among the throng of the traffic, that generating an effortless immersive experience that highlights the sounds of cityscapes. All in all, the audio mix goes beyond in terms of setting the tone of this really wonderful film.
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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Special Feature: PECCADILLO SOFA CLUB LIVE [2020] [1080p] [1.78:1] [76:24] Here we get to meet Henry Golding, Parker Sawyers and Hong Khaou who chat via Skype and in the top right hand corner you have a small video image with a man doing sign language. First up is Henry Golding greeting us, and informs us he cannot make the live video conference chat and has done a pre-recorded Q&A session with the moderator and he hopes you enjoy what you view? Next up we see four images of people on Skype and at the bottom right hand corner the man doing the sign language, which I found very strange. The person at the top left video image is the moderator asking the questions, but we are not informed as his name is not revealed. But in the top right hand video image is Hong Khaou [Director] and in the bottom right hand video image corner is Parker Sawyers [Actor]. The moderator asks lots of questions to the other two people of what questions people have sent who have viewed the film, because they knew when this Q&A session was going to happen and if you want to know the interesting questions that people had sent in and their answers given, well you will have to view this special feature. At around 41:44 we finally get the Q&A session with Henry Golding, and the other two Parker Sawyers and Hong Khaou join in, then Henry Golding and the moderator asking the questions are only able to chat via the Skype video chat. At around 56:03 Hong Khaou and Parker Sawyers come back with the Skype video conference chat and overall it was a very interesting experience and we hear some very funny anecdotes from the two main actors Henry Golding and Parker Sawyers in the film, especially where Parker Sawyers had never ridden a motorcycle and made out he had and nearly had a very bad accident, whereas Henry Golding had done motorcycle dirt track riding in the UK and was very experienced and Parker Sawyers was very impressed, but Parker Sawyers is informed by one of the crew that the motorcycle had no brakes and were very worried about the safety of Henry Golding, but they needed not worry, because he can racing back and did a massive stop by going sideways with the motorcycle and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. At 75:33 the video conference ends and then we get a trailer for the film ‘AND THEN WE DANCED’ for some strange reason.
Special Feature: A CONVERSATION WITH DIRECTOR HONG KHAOU [2020] [1080p] [1.78:1 / 2.39:1] [15:46] Here we finally get to meet director Hong Khaou who is being interviewed by Amelia Gardiner talks about the basic outline of the film ‘MONSOON,’ and says it is about a British Vietnam man going back to a Vietnam he does not remember, a language he does not speak because he was taken to England when he was six years old and cannot remember anything, the Vietnam language he does not speak and trying to befriend his homeland. Now and again we get clips from the film ‘MONSOON.’ Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “So it feels like quite a personal film, and is it something very personal connection to you, and is it something personal a very personal connection to you,” and agrees the film is very personal to him, especially with his childhood growing up in Vietnam, until eventually having to move to England and living in London. Amelia Gardiner asks about him filming in Vietnam, and answers that it had to be actually filmed in Vietnam and had to most time is filmed in the countryside of Vietnam and also specific locations in showing the real side of Vietnam and not the modern cities of Vietnam, but of course due to the storyline, some parts of the film were filmed in the big modern cities of Vietnam. Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “A lot of the characters seem quite foreign to the land itself . . .” and Hong Khaou replies, “Henry Golding has been to Vietnam before and is also half Malaysian and did not suffer any culture clash being in Vietnam, but some of the crew did and got quite a shock what they saw.” Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “How did Henry Golding come into the project?” and Hong Khaou replies, “We really cast the net wide for our Kit character, and we searched far and wide, especially in America, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and took five months and we were really searching for someone who could carry that character role, because it is such a quiet film itself, and we needed an actor who could convey that character, and Amy Hubbard our casting director who finally found Henry Golding and we did a lot of auditions and eventually I [Hong Khaou] flew over to Los Angeles to meet Henry Golding and did a two day physical workshop and after some time decided Henry Golding was perfect for the part of Kit.” Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “At what point did Parker Sawyers come into the project, because their chemistry together was very good,” and Hong Khaou replies, “We found Parker Sawyers earlier on in the process, but there was another actor who we felt would be good for the part in the film, but instead we flew Parker Sawyers over from Australia and was part of the chemistry test and eventually we decided Parker Sawyers was perfect for the part, because we instantly felt he was perfect for the part and had a lovely quality to his character, and eventually we finally got Henry Golding and Parker Sawyers teamed up for the film.” Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “You mention the silence of the film . . . which is quite interesting because it is quite obvious it is very loud place, so can you tell us a bit more about the sound design and how that came to be,” and Hong Khaou replies, “We spent a lot of time on the sound design and also when you go to Vietnam, the sound just follows you and it is chaotic and you are just bombarded with sound, especially with the scooters and the noise of the city and we were very afraid of how to film it and you needed to control some of it and eventually we had to embrace that aspect of it and turn it into the characteristic of the city and embrace it.” Then Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “It’s interesting how looking at sound and how it relates to loneliness . . . and Hong Khaou replies, “Yes there was a lot of that at the beginning, especially when hearing the air conditioning, also get to hear the fridge, you also could hear a lot of white noise in the room and it is very important to juxtaposed that chaos of the city and the kind of inner quietness for Kit and his personal search and journey.” Amelia Gardiner asks Hong Khaou, “ A lot of the characters seem to come from a cultural background which is different from where they grew up,” and Hong Khaou replies, “It was important and it was always intentionally to have that and for me growing up in London is a very multicultural city and when I go out and meet friends and English is only the language being spoken and a generation of adults who come from a background who are struggling for that sense and I really liked the idea of when Kit returns to Vietnam, he meets someone like Lewis whose father was American and you have these two characters who are sort of foreigners and was able to find something in a foreign land and that they are a product from their parents and their history and I like the idea of a personal journey of the character of Kit who is trying to find himself in Vietnam and through that, their Parents history kind of collides forward to affect, and I wanted to politicise the personal within that.” Amelia Gardiner then asks Hong Khaou, “Could you tell me about the title ‘MONSOON’ . . . and where does that come from?” and Hong Khaou replies, “It was called ‘MONSOON’ more as a metaphor more than anything else, and my intention was never to show the monsoon and never to see any of that, I just like the idea that when a monsoon comes it is very quick and very violent and then it dissipates very quickly again, and I see that those feelings that I continue to carry, so I can see that in Kit and it is just that internal struggle for Kit.” Amelia Gardiner then asks Hong Khaou, “In the film, can you tell us about the overhead shot . . . where did that come from,” and Hong Khaou replies, “So in the script originally it was the intention was always when we open the film, was to have this effect that you are in any city really and you have the auto car and as the frame gets wider and wider, then you realise that you are not in the west, but you are probably in the Far east or Southeast Asia, because of the millions of mopeds, so it was just the idea was to give that sense that you do not quite no where you are and have that feeling of being disorientated, which I think is what Kit has had through the journey of being in the film and it was just continuing those themes of being and feeling disorientated, and of course the overhead shot of the traffic was filmed by a drone and we wanted to be filmed in a different way, compared to other films that have used drones to film traffic, and I really love what we did, and eventually that shot where you plunge right into the car to reveal the hero.” Amelia Gardiner then asks Hong Khaou, “I suppose you could please talk about the LBGT theme . . . it is a theme, but it does not seem to be the main theme, was it difficult kind of incorporating that particularly in Vietnam?” and Hong Khaou replies, “In Vietnam it is not illegal to be gay nor is it legal to have sex, and it is an oddgreay area in their law, but of course you get the kind of thing where you cannot hold hands in the street, because that is how it is. So we were told by the company vacillating the filming, that some of the kind of queer elements the Government might not like, and that only way to film it, is to submit the script to them, that had been translated into the Vietnam language, and had to go through 12 minister departments to approve it, and they read it and they gave us a permit on the condition we film those intimate gay scenes elsewhere, and not in Vietnam, and was really annoying, because I have seen a couple of gay films from Vietnam by Vietnam filmmakers, which were far more explicit, but for some unknown reason, we were not allowed to do that, but they said that because we were seen as a foreign company and production company coming into Vietnam and the Government did not want to be conceived as something else, so we had to shoot the film elsewhere, eventually after some persuasion, they relented and allowed us to film the intimate scene between the two men.” Hong Khaou then says that he wanted the film to have a cultural and national identity, and I like to see queer characters that don’t carry the baggage of their queer identity and that we are more than the sum of that. Amelia Gardiner then asks Hong Khaou, “You don’t necessarily get the ending you’re expecting . . . and the journey you got at the beginning and can you give more detail why you finished where you did,” and Hong Khaou replies, “You can’t end the film in a way that ties everything together, you can’t, because the themes I want to talk about, will continue to and I think they will continue to shadow Kit, maybe he might be more accepting of that struggle, than trying to be frustrated by that struggle, and I also wanted the film to end in way on a high, with a sense of hope and I think it would have been wrong to just tie everything too neatly, as if he has found closure and life will be okay so on and so forth, and so it needed that sense and that feeling something will be okay.” At that point the interview with Hong Khaou ends. It was quite interesting, but at times he did waffle too much pompous rhetoric, but despite this, it did give us a different aspect scenario of the film with some in-depth information that director Hong Khaou wanted to portray to the public the two main characters Kit and Lewis in their relationship and I feel he achieved his goal in wanting to set out to produce a really beautiful and thoughtful intelligent gay themed film and I give the interview a top five star rating.
Special Feature: DELETED SCENES: Here you get to view two deleted scenes and they are as follows:
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE [2018] [1080p] [2.39:1] [1:05]
MOTORBIKE SCENE [2018] [1080p] [2.39:1] [0:54]
MONSOON UK THEATRICAL TRAILER [2019] [1080p] [2.39:1] [1:45]
Peccadillo Pictures Trailers: Here we get to view eight amazing individual gay themed trailers and they are as follows:
'A WHITE, WHITE DAY' [2019] [1080p] [2.20:1] [1:55]
'PAPICHA' [2019] [1080p] [2.20:1] [1:52]
'Postcards from LONDON' [2018] [1080P] [2.20:1] [1:51]
'AND THEN WE DANCED' [2019] [1080p] [1.85:1] [1:23]
'The Wound' [2017] [1080p] [2.20:1] [1:50]
'KANARIE' [CANARY] [2018] [1080p] [1.85:1] [1:46]
'SÓCRATES' [2018] [1080p] [1.66:1] [1:31]
'TWO OF US' [2019] [1080p] [2.20:1] [1:38]
Finally, ‘MONSOON’ may suggest an element of stormy denouement, a forceful clearing of the air. Although its final scenes gesture towards resolution, director Hong Khao’s accomplishment is to suggest that such clarifications often remain elusive in life – that it’s the journey, rather than the arrival at any destination that is the real fruit of the experience. I was deeply moved by the film ‘MONSOON.’ It’s full of devastating certainties that shines a light on the poignancy of time. Hong Khaou’s layered writing and directing brings out more than enough meaning, making it a rare and important wonderful evocative film. Very Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
