A quiet couple connects in the shadows of war and national trauma in ‘Việt and Nam’

As its winking title suggests, director Trương Minh Quý’s “Việt and Nam” is constructed out of neat symmetries and thorny juxtapositions. Set in Vietnam in 2001 and focused, ostensibly, on its two eponymous characters, this is a film about mirrored visions of history and twinned versions of desire. Evocative and obfuscating (perhaps to a fault), Trương’s dreamy queer tale about two young men looking backward and forward in equal measure, excavates this country’s bruising war-torn history all while dramatizing a much more recent tragedy — the 2019 deaths of several Vietnamese immigrants who froze inside a shipping container.

Trương doesn’t offer his film’s title card until halfway into its running time. When it arrives, in simple letters against a black backdrop, it doesn’t so much introduce the film as cleave it in half. It’s as much an intervention as it is an intermission, making its audience keenly aware of the many other limits and borders that structure the film. North and south, of course. Before and after the war, obviously. But also, given the film’s interest in local superstitions and ghostly presences, the title obliquely stresses how porous the line is between waking and sleeping (or living and dying). Not that Trương presents any of this in any sort of schematic way. His is a movie that brims with lyricism instead, and hangs on its threadbare plot these many poetic dichotomies.

Việt (Duy Bảo Định Đào) and Nam (Thanh Hải Phạm) spend much of their days underground. Covered in coal dust and away from the warmth of the sun, the two are often indistinguishable from one another. When we first meet them, they’re talking about mysterious late-night dreams (“A fish swam toward me,” Nam says. “It looked at me curiously”) and already mourning what will happen when Nam treks illegally across the border (“You are crazy,” Việt warns him).

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Yet even within the dour working environment at the local mine, these two young men find fleeting moments of satisfaction. One leans back on the other while they’re in line to collect their paycheck, creating an impromptu embrace that goes unseen by anyone nearby. The two hold hands under the table while answering questions from family about why they’ve not yet found wives to wed. Theirs is not a wholly furtive relationship, but it is not altogether an open one either. Most of their most intimate moments, in fact, take place in utter darkness, in spaces where their soot-covered bodies nevertheless stand out from the grime and grit all around them.

In one of the film’s most arresting shots, a recurring image in which both young men are nakedly embracing against the glinting dark coal that envelops them, Trương finds a roughened tenderness that captures just how enamored Việt and Nam are with one another. Their lustful, loving hunger is palpable throughout. This is an earthly and visceral kind of love. They lick blood off one another. They suck each other’s thumbs. They gobble up each other’s ear wax. No wonder the possibility of Nam leaving risks unsettling their tight-knit bond. Việt fears not just what will happen to him but what may well happen to Nam if he embarks on the dangerous journey so many others in their community have taken before.

Yet Trương doesn’t solely focus on these two young lovers, nor on Nam’s specific plan to stow himself away for good. Their tender love story is juxtaposed against a much more tragic tale. Nam’s mother (Nguyễn Thị Nga) is still mourning the death of her husband during the war. She is obsessed, it turns out, with wanting to locate his body, which has never been found. She’s convinced the dreams she’s been having as of late, and which she relays to her son in painstaking detail, offer clues as to where her husband may yet be found. When an old combat friend of her husband’s agrees to help retrace his steps in order to try and help locate the body, “Việt and Nam” leaves the darkened corners of the mine behind. We’re taken, instead, to lush forests where past memories of the war cannot help but color the present these characters are faced with on a day-to-day basis.

There’s a mundanity to the world Trương depicts here, yet also a kind of beguiling vision of what this world holds. The film’s long, languid takes make almost every scene feel like a beautifully composed tableau, turning us into curious voyeurs eager to demystify the hidden secrets found therein. Scored by the natural soundscapes enveloping its characters (whooshing winds and thunderous rainstorms, even the stilled emptiness of the mine), “Việt and Nam” is both simple and cryptic. Its spellbinding pleasures reward a patient audience who’ll be swayed (and may well swoon) over its hypnotic wonders.