SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL: Vietnamese director Vinh Son Nguyen’s The Moon at the Bottom of the Well follows a fairly linear path as a melodrama about an unconventional romantic triangle until the last reel when it offers up a lot of tripe involving a shaman and superstitious rites.
Not that the narrative is all that credible or compelling until that bizarre deviation. Hanh (Anh Hong) is a subservient wife and school teacher in a rural Vietnamese village, whose husband Phoung (Cao de Hoang) is the school’s headmaster.
It emerges that the barren Hanh had agreed to her husband keeping a concubine, Tham, (Vy Thanh) in his mother’s town. Tham has given Phoung one son, and another child is on the way. Hanh and Phoung have separate bedrooms, which she rationalises by saying he’s a light sleeper, although they do have a love life, however spasmodic.
This odd arrangement seems to work well until it’s discovered by Phuong’s colleagues at school and local Communist party officials, threatening his job, status and the outwardly serene relationship with Hanh. It turns out Phuong had divorced his wife and married Tham, so the scandal is averted.
'Since I’m sterile, I accept the situation," Hanh, who has an almost sisterly affection for Tham, tells a friend. 'All I want is for him to be happy and his mother satisfied." But after Tham gives birth to a daughter and Phuong decides to move in with her, Hanh understandably gets angry and seeks the guidance of a fortune-teller/spiritual adviser. Here the film turns from relatively straight-forward drama into a mystical mess, full of symbols, rituals and communicating with the dead. All this is meant to convince us of her spiritual awakening and re-birth, but I don’t buy it for a minute.
The plot defies logic and the pacing is annoyingly languid. The director favours exceedingly long takes when much crisper editing could have given the story some momentum. And he’s curiously fond of shooting through windows, curtains and partly open doors, creating an un-necessary distance from the major characters, which means it’s hard to feel any emotional connection with them.
Anh Hong is adept at conveying Hanh’s despair and loneliness, but Phuong is such a selfish pig, neither charming nor kind, one wonders why she was willing to sacrifice her own needs in devoting her life to him for so long. Also, Cao de Hoang’s performance is fairly insipid and lacking in flair, making their relationship even harder to fathom.
Vinh Son Nguyen, who was born in 1953 and grew up during the Vietnam war, is an experienced director whose credits include Fierce Childhood, The Last Knight and The Sweet Motherland. I’ve not seen his earlier films but The Moon at the Bottom of the Well is an unconvincing, mediocre effort.
