‘Don’t Cry, Butterfly’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Duong Dieu Linh. Vietnam/Singapore/Indonesia/Philippines. 2024. 97mins.

Hardworking Hanoi-based marriage ceremony planner Tam (Le Tu Oanh) learns of her husband Thanh’s (Le Vu Lengthy) infidelity in probably the most humiliating manner possible – he’s caught canoodling with a youthful lady on reside TV. However slightly than confront him, Tam turns to the non secular arts, consulting a feng shui tattooist and a Buddhist witch physician to win again her man’s affections. Sadly, her husband stays oblivious, however a malign spirit takes a eager curiosity. The debut movie from Duong Dieu Linh, Don’t Cry, Butterfly is an energetically confounding mixture of genres – comedy, fantasy and a contact of horror – however could also be too culturally particular in its themes and opaque in its messaging to make a lot of a mark exterior of the competition circuit.

An energetically confounding mixture of genres 

The movie premieres in Venice Critics’ Week and also will display screen in Toronto. It’s a high-profile launch pad that displays the anticipation round Linh’s function debut, which follows a collection of well-regarded quick movies with a shared theme of upset middle-aged Vietnamese ladies (together with Adults Don’t Say Sorry, Candy, Salty and A Journey To Heaven, the latter of which performed in competitors in Locarno). This function is a singular proposition however it appears to be like a deal with, drenched in saturated colors that vibrate from the display screen. The movie’s offbeat mix of feminism, folklore and superstition could seize the curiosity of additional competition programmers and home audiences.

Whereas the image’s storytelling may be disjointed and disorientating, the central theme of gender roles and the disconnect between the sexes is the movie’s backbone. There’s one thing supernatural lurking within the material of the constructing by which 40-something Tam lives with taciturn, distant Thanh and her 20-year-old daughter Ha (Nguyen Nam Linh). However solely the ladies within the block can see it, its presence manifested at first as a dripping damp spot (like a quirkier model of Hideo Nakata’s Darkish Water), after which later as a tar-like substance that extends its sticky tendrils into the room – or maybe simply into Tam’s unconscious. (The movie’s use of CGI is visually placing and inventive all through, even when it’s not totally clear what’s occurring for a lot of the time).

The gap between Tam and her husband is explored by way of different means. Whereas Tam is consistently on the transfer, brisk and businesslike as she rattles round her residence and her place of job, her husband’s gestures have a heavy, sloth-like sluggishness to them. He barely sees Tam and positively doesn’t converse to her. Ha, in the meantime, watches her mom’s rejection and desperation with mounting frustration, channelling her power into guided meditations and desires of escape to check in Europe. She hopes that her finest buddy Trong (Bui Thac Phong) will go along with her, however abandonment points devour him – his mom left him to pursue a profession as a ballet dancer.

The movie is stuffed with errant, dangling threads like Trong’s lacking mom and a subplot linked to Tam’s highschool reunion, however Linh makes little try and tie all of them collectively. There’s additionally a way that non-Vietnamese audiences is likely to be lacking out on sure key symbolism and references – we study a part of the best way by way of the movie that ‘butterfly’ is Vietnamese slang for feminine genitalia; a key piece of the puzzle, maybe, given the movie’s title.