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movie, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Pham Thien An’s contemplative drama “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” blurs the line between surrealism and realism, faith and loss in a subdued search for purpose in the wake of a tragedy. Thien (Le Phong Vu) is a young man in Saigon who works as a wedding videographer and enjoys spending his free time with friends. After a motorbike crash kills his sister-in-law, he steps up to look after his nephew Dao (Nguyen Thinh) and returns to his rural hometown for funeral services and to bring Dao to his new home with relatives in the countryside. Now, he must find his estranged brother, but the journey brings up more conversations about faith and death along the way. On his trip, Thien’s dreams increase in frequency, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.

Winner of the Camera d’Or for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival, “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” is a gorgeous film. Written and directed by An, the film follows Thien on his expedition at a steady pace, taking in the natural beauty of rural Vietnam with exquisite detail, from verdant mountains to foggy skies that add to the ethereal quality of the film’s narrative. Dinh Duy Hung’s Cinematography is equally measured as An’s direction, like in moments when carefully framing people through doors and windows—almost in a John Ford way—to evoke a sense of belonging and travel. Then there are the faraway shots that make Thien and his problems look small from a distance, looking at the bigger picture from a perspective that Thien cannot see for himself. As a nod to An’s work as a wedding videographer, not only do we see an example of Thien at work early on, we see this “back of the room” view at his sister-in-law’s services—observational and removed to a certain existent but still very much present.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFKfhm3uC8I
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/inside-the-yellow-cocoon-shell-film-review-2024

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