Monsoon (2020): A Solemn Meditation on Mourning, Identity, and Displacement
By: Derek Lu
Tags: Film Reviews, Asian American, African American, LGBTQ, Representation

Monsoon (2020): A Solemn Meditation on Mourning, Identity, and Displacement

Hong Khaou’s quiet indie drama reflects on the ways in which loss and trauma become internalized and inexpressible over a lifetime

Sawyers and Golding play conflicted love interests in Monsoon. Image: Strand Releasing.

The bevy of emotions that this film patiently unspools will hit you not quite like a monsoon, but rather, like lightly pelting rain. That is to say, the film is a solemn reverie, quiet in its maneuvers but consistent in its emotional impact. Monsoon stars newly minted Hollywood leading man Henry Golding as Kit, a British Vietnamese man who returns to Ho Chi Minh for the first time since fleeing Vietnam as a refugee (of the Vietnam War). He’s there to scatter the ashes of his mother, while his brother is due to arrive a couple weeks later with their father’s ashes. The sojourn back to Vietnam is a complicated and mournful affair. For Kit, and many other refugees, the country they left is hardly recognizable today, and what proceeds is a deep meditation on identity as Kit struggles to make sense of the friends — and lives — he and his parents left behind. What further complicates this journey is the fact that Kit is gay. While he is there, he goes on a date with a Black American man named Louis (Parker Sawyers from Southside with You), with his own share of baggage, and their initial one-night stand blossoms into something that unexpectedly brings much-needed light into Kit’s life.

I won’t spoil the path that this film puts Kit on, but I do want to talk about memory and mourning. The film is saturated with a consistent, elegiac tone, as we witness Kit reconcile with fragments of his former life. He meets up with his close childhood friend Lee, who now owns a mobile phone shop. Kit presents his old friend and his mom with gifts symbolizing Western luxury (whiskey, biscuits, chocolates) and civilization (a water bottle with built-in filtration). Kit recognizes a touch too late that the latter offering makes an offensive implication about the country’s drinking water, and Golding delivers the swirling embarrassment and humility the scene commanded convincingly.

David Tran plays Lee, Kit’s childhood friend who stayed in Vietnam. Image: Strand Releasing.

This former friend is not presented to establish a trite East vs. West dichotomy, however; instead, his presence opens an avenue for exploring the ways in which their family histories and fates are intertwined. As Lee (an excellent David Tran) relays to Kit, his family also tried to flee, but they were not ultimately selected. Kit’s family also lent Lee’s family a substantial amount of money, which the latter used to open up their electronics shop, punctuating their relationship with a sense of indebtedness and veiled bitterness. Did Kit’s parents never relay what happened to his childhood friend, or were those memories also a casualty of their relocation, alongside Kit’s fluency in Vietnamese and sense of place? As such, Lee offers a mirror for Kit, offering a vision for what life might have been like had he remained in Vietnam.

The other individual who provides a refracted image for Kit is Louis, whose father fought in the Vietnam War. Consequently, Kit and Louis unwittingly present opposing viewpoints on the conflict in Vietnam. As Louis is quick to remind Kit (and viewers), “we [America] lost people too…an entire generation.” [Editor’s note: it goes without saying that the US did not have to involve itself in these regional conflicts in Southeast Asia, had it not been hell bent on “preserving” its sphere of influence in Asia.] Louis is at first adamant and resolute in his feelings of nonguilt, fueled by the traumas that his father suffered, but eventually softens his stance. As he awkwardly implores to Kit during a pivotal scene: “I don’t want you to think I’m one of those crazy Yanks…I’m not that, right?” The film does not necessarily comment on who was right and wrong during the Vietnam War era and the efficacy of the US’s foreign policy, but it is committed to showcasing the legacies and traumas of the war, especially for the Vietnamese people.

Louis and Kit find themselves both grappling with the Vietnam War. Image: Strand Releasing.

Throughout the film, we witness Kit struggling to locate his sense of self and identities (both past and present) amidst a rapidly modernizing Vietnam. His parents’ former home is about to be demolished in favor of luxury apartments. We see Kit interacting with a group of mostly white tourists and attending an “art tour” run by a white French woman — are these hints of the continuing legacies of colonialism in Vietnam? A profound moment arrives near the end of the film. During Kit’s final meeting with Lee, the latter asks if he’s found a place to bury his parents. Kit haltingly replies, “I don’t know.” Lee observes, “You look tired…full of pain.” Kit doesn’t respond, but his sadness is both visible and visceral. Golding conveys the confusion and grief and longing for connection that the character has repressed — or forgotten until he returned to his former homeland — so effectively with only his eyes, sullen and adding years to Golding’s boyish, handsome face.

The film effectively deploys closeup shots of Golding’s expressive face. Image: Strand Releasing.

Monsoon continues the evocatively plaintive meditation on displacement, loss, memory and trauma we first witnessed in director Hong Khaou’s debut feature Lilting (highly recommend, for the record). The camera work is truly something to marvel about, as it masterfully elevates Kit’s pulsating sense of disorientation, dislocation, and distance from the world around him. The nearly dialogue-free introductory sequence is both artfully shot and claustrophobic, foreshadowing the protagonist’s harrowing journey ahead. See Jessica Kiang’s radiant review in Variety for an expert examination of the film’s visual style and stylings.

But what I want to end on is a discussion of the casting. See, both Golding and Sawyers are straight in real-life, and they were cast to play gay men in this film. As per recent discussions of casting practices in Hollywood that substitute a minoritized racial or gender identity for a dominant one, this feels wrong. [See: Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusunagi in Ghost in the Shell AND as trans man Tex Gill.] In layman’s terms, this is an example of classic Hollywood whitewashing. Yet, there’s been precious little controversy over this. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this is an indie feature and not a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. In a cover story and interview with Out magazine, Golding addressed the thorny issue of his casting. He acknowledged that we must talk about it; yet his take on the issue ended up being disappointingly typical of Hollywood. In his mind, the character’s sexuality was not central to the story. As he explicates: “We felt as though because the story didn’t revolve around his sexuality and the importance of his sexuality and the importance of the history of his sexuality, that as an actor I’m able to open myself to that.” In other words, he was able to (willing to?) play the part because he was able to divorce sexuality from the character.

Yet, that perspective is one borne of naivete and privilege — gay men of color do not get to divorce their race or sexuality from their lived experience, as the persistent assaults of homophobia and racism on our bodies prove every day. The experience of a gay Vietnamese British refugee is inherently different from that of a straight Vietnamese American refugee. All my life, I have longed for genuine representations of gay Asian American men — to provide mirrors or avatars through which I might be able to imagine my future self and existence in the world. The first time I saw a same-sex love story on television was on Glee in 2009, and, formative as it was, it was between white men, only one of whom identified as gay (throwing side eye at Darren Criss).

As Oliver Hampton, Conrad Ricamora played one of the few gay Asian characters on primetime TV. Image: Variety.

10 years later, mainstream roles and visibility for gay Asian American men is still few and far between, with Conrad Ricamora and Nico Santos as the two recent exceptions able to book primetime gigs. Monsoon had a momentous opportunity to hire not one but two queer actors of color for this gay interracial love story that also tackles the legacies of the Vietnam War from opposing viewpoints. Such multi-faceted, complex roles for gay actors of color are urgently needed and widely desired. When straight actors are also considered for gay roles, then LGBT actors of color have an additional handicap to surmount. In an interview with Advocate, Billy Eichner commented on this exact phenomenon, contending that actors of color are pigeonholed into gay roles once they publicly come out, citing Matt Bomer as a prime example.

ScarJo defiantly retorted to critics of her casting as Tex Gill: “You know, as an actor I should be able to play any person, or any tree, or any animal, because that’s my job and the requirements of my job.” If that were indeed true — that is, if an actor’s job is to be open to interpreting a character — then how come gay actors are rarely considered for straight roles? How often do you hear of people of color being cast to play white characters? Therein lies the privilege for those in the dominant group(s), and why it must not go unspoken that this deeply moving, poetic film on the legacies of war and trauma still left much to be desired.