2023 Movie
Dir. Pham Thien An · France, Singapore · Vietnamese
A gorgeous and hypnotic—but very demanding—piece of slow cinema
As a sluggishly paced, three-hour spiritual drama with little dialogue and even less plot, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell certainly won’t convert anybody who isn’t already interested in slow cinema. Even those who don’t mind these types of films in which “nothing happens” might feel that it doesn’t weave its themes of faith and suffering tightly enough. But there’s more than enough beauty to contemplate here, courtesy of Dinh Duy Hung’s stunning cinematography, which invites us to simply inhabit the world and to stop looking for answers. This may sound like a copout, but it’s quite the experience to have a film force you to rethink how you’re viewing it, as you’re viewing it.
After a Vietnamese woman dies in a car crash in Saigon, her brother-in-law and her young son transport her body back to the former’s hometown in rural Vietnam, where they plan to give her a funeral.
"It’s the kind of film that steadily trains you in perceiving and eventually becoming lost in its sense of time, to the extent that you can almost forget the presence of the camera even when it is moving."
— Josh Slater-Williams
"“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” blurs the line between surrealism and realism, faith and loss in a subdued search for purpose in the wake of a tragedy."
— Monica Castillo
A man returns to his countryside hometown in the hopes of bringing word of his sister-in-law's death to his missing brother.
Thien An Pham's direction is clearly influenced (whether intentionally or not) by many other slow cinema masters such as Lav Diaz and Chantal Akerman. But in this, his first feature, he displays a real mastery over the camera, finding many opportunities to break from static shots and to make the flow of scenes more dynamic than expected. The film's best moments are when Pham follows his characters as they traverse the landscape, the camera patiently following from behind, with every moment unfolding a new layer to the environment, like a tapestry unfurling. And if you can get on its hypnotic wavelength, that might be more than enough to enjoy the film as a whole.
I can think of no place that's more distracting to watch slow cinema on than streaming.
Cannes
1 win
Spirit Awards
2 noms
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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