Adrift (Choi Voi) – review

After being imposed for many years by the Communist regime, censorship is gradually loosening its grip in Vietnam. Witness Choi Voi (Adrift), a film by the young director Bui Thac Chuyen , which was previewed at the Venice film festival in 2009 and explores topics such as homosexuality, which used to upset the authorities. Adrift centres on the amicable complicity linking two young women. Without realising that Cam is in love with her, Duyen marries a stolid taxi driver. Their wedding night is a disaster, the blind drunk husband falling unconscious. Watched over by an omnipresent mother-in-law, days then weeks pass without her man laying a finger on her. Apparently devoid of any urges, he sleeps. Cam is a novelist and must have read Choderlos de Laclos (author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses). Out of jealousy and mischief she thrusts her friend into the arms of a serial seducer who makes her his mistress, introducing her to the pleasures of the flesh, to perverse games and emotional dependence. Duyen gradually becomes a contemporary Merteuil. The film is a restrained melodrama, discreetly lyrical and mildly erotic. Timid Duyen's apprenticeship unfolds under everyday circumstances closer to torpor than torrid passion. Much as her efforts to investigate the youth of her grandfather, whose diary she discovers, the characters somehow lack definition. This is confirmed by the title itself, which can be taken to mean wavering, confusion or indecision and may equally well refer to the heroine's hesitation or to "a boat that has lost its anchor, a kite without a string", says Chuyen. Not much is said and it rains a lot. Water is everywhere, a symbol of desire, represented by a shower, a rainstorm or a sink overflowing. The same is true of Bi, Dung Soi (Bi, Don't Be Afraid) by Phan Dang Din, which was shown last year at Cannes. Here a 10-year old observes his family, an exhausted father and a mother who is a prey to her libido, in an environment in which ice quenches thirst and cools inner fires. Din wrote the screenplay for Adrift. The two films are similar, offering the same take on male chauvinism in a matriarchal world, the same picture of female sexuality repressed by tradition. Vietnamese society is rooted in the family, where women impose their rules everywhere apart from sex, which explains the frustration, illicit attractions, secrets and infidelity. Dominated by a castrating mother, the young husband in Adrift is immature, a child who plays football with the kids in the street, leaving his young wife no option but to take her charms elsewhere. This article originally appeared in Le Monde