KARLOVY VARY – Henry Golding will tell you he never intended to be an actor. He spent a majority of his professional career as a television host before a surprise audition for last summer’s “Crazy Rich Asians” made him a global superstar. A role in Paul Feig’s underrated “A Simple Favor” quickly followed, but he hasn’t had the opportunity to display his talents beyond mostly traditional studio fare. That changes with Hong Khaou’s “Monsoon,” which premiered at the 2019 Karlovy Vary Film Festival this weekend.
Set in modern-day Vietnam, Golding plays Kit, a 36-year-old animator who has returned to the country of his birth for the first time since he was a child. We soon discover that Kit and family escaped the nation’s communist regime to England thirty years prior. Now, he’s sold his possessions for an extended trip abroad including some time in Saigon, where he hopes to find a place to rest his mother’s ashes. Almost immediately, however, he feels more out of place than he was expecting.
After trying to find his bearings, Kit meets up with his cousin Lee (David Tran) and his aunt. Lee has reverence of his childhood memories of playing with Kit but is disappointed to discover his old friend has few memories of those times. As you’d expect, Lee’s life has been much harder than Kit’s and he currently runs a mobile phone shop he started with help from a loan from Kit’s mother. There is a mixture of jealousy, sadness and guilt between the two men even as Lee does everything he can to assist Kit on his pilgrimage. Eventually, we learn Kit’s mother tried to help Lee and her sister migrate, but they were rejected no matter what country they applied to.
Admittedly feeling like a “tourist” while living in a very contemporary and new neighborhood of the city, a lonely Kit uses a gay dating app to meet Lewis (Parker Sawyers), an American ex-pat supervising the production of his clothing line in the country. Their initial encounter finds both men hiding aspects of themselves (Lewis that his father was a Vietnam veteran and that Kit was born in Saigon), but it’s just a hook-up right? But then, surprisingly, it isn’t. They see each other a few more times and after an excursion to Hanoi to visit his parent’s original home Kit returns to Saigon and almost immediately sees Lewis. We know little of Kit’s relationships in England, but you have to assume this one is different. It’s just one of many things in the picture Khaou leaves the audience to ponder on their own.
The good news is that Khaou’s second feature is a distinct improvement over his Sundance debut, 2014’s “Lilting.” Born in Cambodia, but partially raised in Vietnam before migrating to the United Kingdom, “Monsoon” is a very personal and, arguably, semi-autobiographical story for Khaou who is using Kit as a cipher to discuss a number of different issues. He shows us a bustling Vietnam (the first shot of the film is a birds-eye view of a packed traffic intersection) and introduces a specific character, Linh (Molly Harris), to demonstrate how quickly many of the country’s traditions are being pushed aside. The new generation doesn’t talk about the war, they want to travel the world and find economic success (notably, themes similarly covered in a slew of Chinese films a decade ago at a similar historical juncture). And in an era where immigration is a hot button issue in numerous Western countries, Khaou wants to spotlight the often neglected side of the story where families and friends ripped apart because of bureaucratic squabbling.
“Monsoon” also benefits from Khaou’s insistence on showing you a ground-level view of Vietnam today. He’ll hold the camera on Kit looking out a train window on city and town after town passing by. You’ll follow Kit on the back of a scooter as he travels through the city. And the contrast between the decadent, new planned communities and the run-down, poorer parts of the cities is simply hard to miss. Thankfully, Benjamin Kracun’s cinematography wonderfully avoids travelogue cliches and often provides stunning images when you least expect it.
Golding is very, very good in what is, effectively, his first real dramatic role. Khaou’s script has little dialogue so, along with Sawyers, he has to use what’s there to inform the audience. In this context, that’s a lot of shading to ask of an actor who is in almost every shot of your film. Golding portrays Kit with the best arc he can, but you can’t help thinking Khaou could have given him more backstory to work with.
“Monsoon” leaves many questions unanswered including a final sequence that feels slightly out of place. It’s the only portion of the film with an intentional “musical score” and if it’s supposed to provide emotional button it fails to do so. And for a naturalistically told story about a man finding his place in the world, slightly more emotion wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing. [B-]