Song Lang (2018) is a Vietnamese film co-written and directed by Leon Le.
The premise of this film is that an emotional connection is possible between two men of very different outward temperaments.
Isaac plays Linh Phung, a performer in Vietnamese traditional opera. Lien Binh Phat portrays Dung "Thunderbolt," an enforcer for a vicious lone shark.
Thunderbolt goes about his job with impassive, brutal efficiency. He says that when people borrow money, they have to pay it back. If they can't, or won't, he sees to it that they do.
The two men meet when Dung Thunderbolt is about to burn the costumes when he's unable to collect a debt at Linh Fung's opera. Linh offers him enough to keep the match unlit, although Dung won't accept it.
The two men are attracted to each other. No one ever mentions the word "gay." It's probably not acceptable in Vietnam, where all culture is controlled by the state. My sense is that Cai-Luong opera male stars are thought to be gay, even though they portray excessively masculine characters onstage.
Their relationship changes their lives, in unusual and surprising ways. The plot of the film is complex and subtle, and keeps you thinking about it after the movie is over.
A real bonus is the scenes from the opera performances themselves. The opera music sounds strange to our western ears, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it as a true art form.
Both men are fine actors. However, for me, the best acting was done by Phuong Minh as Auntie Nga, the loan shark. I can't remember someone portraying a person with no soul so well. When tragedy strikes, her comment is, "No one is forced to borrow from me." She clearly has no guilt at all about her actions.
We saw this movie at the Little Theatre, as part of Rochester's wonderful ImageOut Film Festival. The opera scenes probably work better on the large screen, but the film is worth seeing on a small screen if that's your only option.
This movie has an extremely high IMDb rating of 8.0, with over 200 raters. That's amazingly high for a foreign film about gay men. I consider this a must-see film if you're interested in the music or in a relationship that grows between two very different men. I highly recommend it.
