L'arbre aux papillons d'or

Watching this film feels like sitting for three hours in a sauna waiting for something that never comes and that I don't even care about.

Usually, I love contemplative film where nothing happens. But it should come with a mastery in mise en scene, and a certain sobriety. Artistic boldness should still hold the audience for the duration to the very end. Yet this film offers nothing beyond its self-indulgent ravishing photography. The filmmaker clearly wants to inflict suffering on the viewer, but this experience is purposeless. And this sense of purposelessness, which one may assume is the philosophical meaning that the film tries to suggesst, is forced upon the viewer through half-hearted dialogue. In fact, the dialogue didn't hold enough attention in relating to the material around it to make it interesting.

It's simply an international coproduction by a Vietnamese filmmaker indented for highbrow international critics and festivals, made for the sake of being clever and 'cinephile'.

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell won the Camera d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and after viewing it, I can see why.

It's a extremely beautiful looking movie with strong direction from Pham Thien An, great sound designs, and interesting themes and concepts explored within the movie. The themes about Vietnamese culture, souls, loss and reconnection are explored throughout as Thein An captures the tone, atmosphere and environment with his directing style and approaches onto the narrative. Many of the camerawork, soundtrack, sound designs and the uses of the performances from the cast are visually breathtaking and felt realistic.

Many of the dialogue moments is pretty strange but it felt like a spiritual experience or poetic style of writing that felt purposeful and fits the setting within the characters and story. For a run-time of 182 minutes, it is slow and it will be tough for many viewers but I personally was observed and invested throughout understanding the hidden meanings and the life styles of Vietnamese culture and the themes explored.

Overall, it's a refreshing to see more Vietnamese cinema.

I don't see the point of reviewers who say a movie like this is slow and boring, and "nothing happens." (If you want a movie where indeed nothing happens, try "Goodbye, Dragon Inn.") Sure, there are longueurs, and not all the plot choices are good ones. But there is a quiet beauty about this film, and it is at its best deeply pleasurable. Some of the scenes and framing are like pictures in a museum. The uncertainties of time, place, and characters I often find annoying in other films are less irksome here. I think viewers who appreciative this kind of slow-paced movie, and are less concerned about a pulsing plot than an absorbing sensory experience, will like it.

I don't buy any of this arty nonsense about "life", "faith", "death" etc. All I know is that Thien An Pham's 'Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell' was 3 hours of my life I'll never get back, and anybody thinking of watching it would be well-advised to find something else. The film starts with a good idea, a sudden death, a bereaved relative, a search for meaning ... but then the central character Thien played by Le Phong Vu goes on an aimless odyssey through rural Vietnam in search of God-knows-what? For me, at least, the film could use basic editing and a narrative device. Tell a proper story why don't you? It's not without charm in places (for example, his chance meeting at a road stop with an old lady (Nsnd Phi Dieu) who sounds very wise, and the relationship between Thien and the orphaned son of his sister-in-law Dao (Nguyen Thinh) is quite touching), but is largely spoilt by having no clear purpose or pace. You can't really apply a 'one-take' mentality to a travelogue feature, it's just too slow. Magic Realism? Pah! And pointing a camera at something doesn't necessarily make for good camera work either, whatever the subject, certainly not the Caméra d'Or ("Golden Camera") the film was apparently awarded at Cannes 2023. And don't kid yourself the things will get better over time, they certainly don't. 'Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell' is a long drawn-out borefest and is frankly best avoided. The emperor really has no clothes!

I grabbed my first chance to see this film in the cinema on a big screen. The film is a wonder in so many aspects and definitely live up to its Camera d'Or at Cannes, and also my own expectation. I love how realistic and organic every scene is about the daily life in Vietnam from the big city to the rural area. The first half deceived me a bit into thinking how simple the film had been and then it went on to astonish me with its dreamlike second half, so mesmerizing and even haunting. There are just so many brilliant scenes. The scene of the fighting roosters in early morning is simply a masterful in long take but also a brief scene, like of the buffaloes blocking the road is immediately thought provoking. That ending is above all, to me simply perfect. It's just so wonderful I would love to meet the filmmakers and shake hand with all of them :)