By Robert St. Martin
Currently playing on intermittent nights at the Los Feliz Theatre in Los Angeles and recently at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood is Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng, 2023), a Vietnamese-language dramatic film that won the Caméra d’Or award at Cannes in 2023 for Best First Feature Film. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is a gorgeous contemplative film that blurs the lines between surrealism and realism, faith and loss in a young man’s subdued search for purpose in life in the wake of a tragedy. Clocking in at just over 3 hours, it is a fine example of slow cinema where the viewer fills the gaps of the story and moments of silence with their own thoughts and interpretations. The “cocoon shell” is said by director Pham Thien Ân to be a metaphor or symbol for people trapped chasing after fame or fortune and to escape the “shell” requires some soul-searching revolving around the question of “What to live for.”
Thien (Le Phong Vu) is a young man in Saigon who works as a wedding videographer and enjoys spending his free time with friends. After a motorbike crash kills his sister-in-law, he steps up to look after his nephew Dao (Nguteb Thinh) and returns to his rural hometown for funeral services and to bring Dao to his new home with relatives in the countryside. Now, he must find his estranged brother, but the journey brings up more conversations about faith and death along the way. On his trip, Thien’s dreams increase in frequency, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.
Written and directed by Ân, the film follows Thien on his expedition at a steady pace, taking in the natural beauty of rural Vietnam with exquisite detail, from verdant mountains to foggy skies that add to the ethereal quality of the film’s narrative. Dinh Duy Hung’s cinematography is equally measured as Ân’s direction, like in moments when carefully framing people through doors and windows to evoke a sense of belonging and travel.
Thien’s internal spiritual journey is also reflected in the visual and narrative details of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. Jesus on the cross is seen several times throughout the movie, from walls and funeral decor to hidden among the reeds of a river. There are plenty of statues of the Virgin Mary in the homes of the Vietnamese people Thien meets along the way in his journey into the mountains where Catholicism seems a powerful force. Beyond Christ’s imagery, Thien’s old crush, Thao (Nguyen Thi Truc Quynh), grows up to be a nun and teacher in their old hometown. On his travels to find his brother, his motorbike fails, and Thien receives help from a Good Samaritan who gets him to a mechanic. Although it seems like religion has failed him, it is all around him in both small and noticeable ways. Something about the natural beauty of his trip feels as calming as sitting in a church pew under stained glass windows’ kaleidoscopic lights.
Thien’s meditative passage through the Vietnamese countryside may have started as a search for his brother, but the film provides plenty of time to soak in the beauty and the complexities of trying to make sense of death or find purpose in faith. In some sense, this spiritual sojourn feels at odds with Thien’s city life, which was filled with work and friends, less so the solitary time needed to think through life’s tougher questions.
Religion has been a theme at the forefront of cinema for many decades: Some of the best directors of all time have turned their camera onto the subject, including Carl Theodor Dreyer (Ordet), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver). Pham Thien Ân’s feature debut, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, has the same tortured protagonists as many of these directors’ works, as well as a similar haunting exploration of faith in the Scorsese’s 2016 (Silence) –although much more abstractly, and operating at an extremely languid pace. For all the striking imagery and hints at greatness, however, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is about a young man’s attempt to find faith and his sense of the futility of his quest.
On a normal night in Saigon, three young men sit at dinner having a deep conversation about faith that belies their relaxed setting. One seems unsure about the prospect of religion, but open to exploration, whilst the other sees it only as a folly. The third man, our protagonist Thien (Le Phong Vu), is quietest on the subject, as his friends point out. Here we see the first inklings of Thien’s own crisis of faith and identify which form the backbone of Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.
They become even more important to Thien when his sister-in-law dies, leaving him to care for her young son Dao (Nguyen Thinh) whilst he searches for his brother, who disappeared years ago. This journey, which takes on a dreamlike atmosphere as Thien’s own phantoms and memories come to the fore, leads him to his childhood village in rural Vietnam. Whilst faith plays an important part in Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Thien’s journey is not just limited to the religious; he searches for connection in various avenues of his life, desperately seeking some form, whatever it might take.
Director/writer Phạm Thiên Ân guides us through this dreamlike journey with a great elegance. Dinh Duy Hung’s exquisite cinematography – one of the film’s best aspects – allows scenes to flow naturally, with background detail as invigorating as the conversations and people at the forefront. Like a Béla Tarr film, the camera glides with a slow, guided air, enhancing the dreamscape we are witnessing. A combination of slow zooms, wide shots, and static camerawork – preferred to closeups or quick cuts – reinforce it even more. Running at 178 minutes and with this patient pace, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is intentionally slow cinema akin to an Apichatong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady, Memoria) film. Pham lingers on certain details at choice moments, such as the soil as a dead bird is buried, to eke out meaning, providing yearning for a deeper understanding of the symbolism of our actions.
Ân, whose base often cycles between Saigon and Houston, Texas, where he has family, became an instant celebrity in Vietnamese media and cinephilic circles after his Cannes win. But he’s been around cameras a while, mostly filming shorts and weddings (“I still do this,” he says). Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is his first feature-length film. Pham Thien Ân’s 2019 Cannes short film entry, Stay Awake, Be Ready, which won the Illy Short Film Award in the Directors’ Fortnight section, inspired Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. The film is a co-production between Vietnam, Singapore, France, and Spain. It has been picked up by Kino Lorber for U.S. distribution.
