As soon as the sun guillotines into the ocean, Saigon is flooded with artificial light. A heap of shades, not inferior in variety to the rainbow, falls on the faces of passers-by, who are in a hurry to get things done even late at night. Nimble mopeds run through the roads, night butterflies attract slightly confused tourists, and locals dip their feet into the cool sea. The city is desperate to sleep.
In recent months, Thien has echoed the South Vietnamese capital that half a century ago became part of history. Every night, either a fledgling scream breaks out of it or the gnashing of ground bones: sleep recedes, the clock shines for three constant hours, and heavy rain rustles outside the window. Soon the thunderstorm will subside, and sticky stuffiness will fall on the city again.
But Thien, excited, won't fall asleep anymore. As soon as he opens his eyes, frightened by his own wheezing, he will be overwhelmed by enduring fatigue, emptiness, and fragments of the past. Wrapped around their neck, they will put pressure on the main character until he falls asleep the next night, so that a few hours later he will wake up again in a cold sweat.
Thien's life used to be much more predictable, even though that didn't make it easy. When his parents emigrated to the United States, he moved to Saigon. His beloved, a few loved ones and native village were left behind. The green hills, the familiar streets that the rains are always blurring, and the hubbub of insects have disappeared into the fog. They were replaced by asphalt and skyscrapers.
The world around the main character has become more complicated. The chaos and loneliness that make up the crowds of every metropolis have seeped into it. Although Thien didn't care much at first, he spent time with friends in massage parlors without trouble sleeping. But over time, anxiety caught up with him, foreshadowing either changes or tragedy.
The reason for the anxiety becomes clear when bad news reaches Thien. His brother's wife, who had disappeared years ago, died unexpectedly. Now the main character will have to take care of both the funeral and his preschool nephew, who is all alone. Despite the throbbing melancholy and the remains of energy that resemble transparent remnants.
Thien pauses his life in Saigon and goes to his native village. The more he moves away from the bustling city, the more space nature conquers. The whole district is covered with dense greenery; only rare roads form gaps in it. And you can hear birds singing and insects chirping everywhere. These lands are no longer fully owned by humans.
The main character returns to an environment that has become alien to him both emotionally and physically. Time has cut ties with the locals, and the habits of the vast city have been cut off the ground. Although Thien is far from taking the forest for granted, nature is no longer an integral part of his life. And such alienation, as Ryusuke Hamaguchi showed in “Evil Does Not Exist” (read our text), extremely dangerous.
Movie “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” takes its protagonist by surprise. His life in Saigon has broken apart, which is rapidly expanding due to sleepless nights, and his return to his native village brings him up with not always pleasant memories. Thien's future is literally sandwiched between past and present, and as time goes by, these clutches are tightening.
The catch is that the current tension goes against the usual cinema decisions: it does not increase the pace, but results in silence and sweeping scenes. Upon arrival in the village of Tien, she plunges into a half-hour sketch shot in a single take. This slowness is not only reminiscent of the movie “Long Day's Journey into Night”, but also fills what is happening with frustration.
Director Thien An Pham intentionally stretches time and space. It increases the length of scenes but doesn't fill them with unnecessary talk and action. The characters find themselves in a viscous environment that paradoxically gives freedom. They don't have to hurry to play the role, so each scene looks more like a pinch of real life than a well-calibrated production.
This mundane nature may make Thien's misery seem unnecessarily protracted, but that's what makes it believable. “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” is like life itself, which is often made up of monotonous routines and unremarkable conversations, and shows the simple life of ordinary people, leaving enough space for interpretation between them.
Thien's journey through his own traumas and sorrows, which in most films would result in cleansing and accepting fate, ends in ellipses. The pain remains trapped inside an impermeable cocoon. Just like in a life that takes its time to give answers to even urgent questions and stretches in a thin stream in an unknown direction — through forests and under the hubbub of birds.
