Summary
A stunningly photographed blend of fantasy and reality that’s also a rumination on colonialism and the primal nature of being.
“Conceived as a counterpoint and a complement to Competition, says Berlinale of their program strand, “Encounters is a competitive section devoted to new cinematic visions.” If ever there was a film that fit that description perfectly, then it’s Lê Bảo’s VỊ (or Taste).
Conceived and developed under Torino’s FeatureLab, and expanding on an award-winning 2016 short of the same name, it ostensibly follows an unemployed Nigerian footballer Bassley (Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga) who moves in with four women in Ho Chi Minh City following termination from his team.
Initially playing entirely without dialogue, we follow Bassley through barber shops, alleys and warehouses. He and the women perform massages on each other, eat food, watch television, lay in bunkers, have sex and, on the more absurdist end of the scale, wash a pig in a river and make giant hot air balloons. All of this seems to be happening in isolation of the rest of the world, with the implication that they rarely if ever go outside, creating objects for a social strata they cannot be a part of. “I have never seen a hot air balloon I made floating in the sky,” comments one woman.
Structured more like a installation piece or something you might find in the Forum Expanded section of the festival, it almost feels like the kind of film you can wander in and out of and absorb in dreamlike snatches. At one point they bring in a giant swordfish, confirming that there are external influences. In other scenes, we slowly get information about Bassley’s family. “I have a son in Nigeria, a child of my loins,” he pragmatically laments. “That is why I work.”
Lê Bảo’s film is a work of abstraction, and it doesn’t have to all make literal sense, but he scatters enough nuggets throughout so there is at least something for every viewer to hook into. Gorgeously photographed by Vinh Phúc Nguyễn in a widescreen ratio, the measured pace of the film allows us to linger on moments.
Perhaps the most powerful of these images is the simplest: the players gathered around a tiny window trying to catch a glimpse of the wider world. VỊ could be seen as a commentary on colonialism, and some have even suggested the isolation that comes from globalisation. Over the last year, these issues have come back to the forefront of discourse, and Lê Bảo is unquestionably an artist who has a unique point of view on the topics.
2021 | Vietnam / Singapore / France / Thailand / Germany / Taiwan | DIRECTOR: Lê Bảo | WRITER: Lê Bảo | CAST: Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga, Thi Minh Nga Khuong, Thi Dung Le, Thi Cam Xuan Nguyen, Thi Tham Thin Vu | DISTRIBUTOR: Wild Bunch International, Berlinale 2021 | RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1-5 March 2021 (GER)
