Song lang

Good plot, dramatic, moving, great threater music, subtle to display LGBT love, cinographic.

The heart of this story is the cai-luong theatrical style which is a Vietnamese style of folk opera very similar to Chinese opera in the 12 tone scale. The singer/actors have gone to great lengths to provide a perfect as possible recreation of the sound and story of the opera. The surrounding story is also operatic in nature, with two young men who have similar backgrounds but have taken different paths meeting and getting to know each other through coincidental meetings with each helping the other in some fashion. Linh, the singer, believes in time travel which is the core of the surrounding story as each character revisits particular moments in the path that shaped their future direction.

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.

I'm from Vietnam, so i can clearly understand what happend in the film, i can said that the director doing such a great job in filming this film, it beautiful, but on the other side the scrip is so boring and lack of emotion. I can't event call this is a gay film cause the relationship between two main character is more like friends. This film is about our traditional called "cai luong" but actually i don't like it in this film cause it so long...

This movie moves me so so much. The camera work is execellent, beautiful shots. The acting of both the lead and supporting actors is great. The retro theme of Vietnam is poitrated to detailed levels, even the gift warp... I saw some commenting about this not being a real boy-boy relationship just a friendship. That is so wrong. The realtionship is so sutle, sophiticatedly pictured and that is a beauty of it. Gay love should not be all about hot scences... I wish there were more Vietnamese films this good. I am sure there will be but can someone speed it up.