In Vietnamese director Lê Bảo’s new film, an extended family confronts various rifts and estrangements in its ranks; years of silence must give way, slowly and haltingly, to communication. That the film is called “Hearing” might sound awfully pat, but nothing is so obvious in this sensuous, intuitive mood piece, which consistently surprises with its spare, searching narrative and radically layered technique. In his second feature — following 2021’s highly accomplished “Taste,” which won a jury prize in Berlin’s former Encounters competition — Lê continues to invite comparisons with rigorously experimental formalists like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pedro Costa, while cutting a path between closely observed domestic drama and freely ambient surrealism that feels his own.
Premiering in the main competition at Locarno, this is challenging arthouse fare of the type that may need continued festival exposure and accolades to persuade distributors to take a chance on it. “Hearing” could have an easier route to specialist streaming platforms, though its exquisite technical qualities — in particular, Vincent Villa’s intricate sound design — are best showcased in theaters. Singapore production company E&W Films’ recent credits include Cannes selections “Viet and Nam” and “9 Temples to Heaven,” which is a fair indication of the new film’s woozy, hypnotic slow-cinema lane.
As indicated by the titles of his two features to date (plus the 2014 short “Scent”), Lê’s cinema is sense-led, and a bravura opening sequence establishes this film’s reliance on sonic texture and contrast. In a packed, bustling restaurant, collective chatter reaches cacophonous levels, which is where mechanic Ninh (Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn) comes in. His job is the installation of decibel meters, which trigger a glaring blue light when excessive levels of noise are reached — as happens here, though the rowdy patrons aren’t deterred. We cut away to a florist above the establishment, where workers stand taut in stark half-light, as if petrified by the din below; only when one neighbor, driven to breaking point, throws a flower pot off the balcony is there a brief, blessed, slightly bemused hush.
But noise is release in this dusty working-class community, where lives tend to unfold in unassuming quiet. We see that cathartic shift in volume again at a local nightclub on the edge of the forest, where villagers of all ages dance manically to deep, throbbing techno music — Ninh among them. His days are altogether more muted: He lives with his elderly mother (Ngọc Tản), following his separation from his wife (Khánh Huyền), who has moved with their two children to her parents’ house nearby. He yearns to reconcile, but she can’t forgive his past domestic violence. Ninh’s parents’ marriage was destroyed by similar abuse, though in their case, it’s his rural-dwelling father (Minh Hùng), the perpetrator, who refuses to make peace.
Silence is not calm in “Hearing,” however, and it’s certainly not contentment. Lê’s film is marked throughout by wounded reticence and nervous distance, and conversation, when it comes, doesn’t break the tension. Ninh’s mother awkwardly reminisces to him about her physical relationship with his father; Ninh frankly and regretfully tells his children about how he beat their mother. In work, at least, quiet is productive and purposeful: In some of the film’s most mesmerising scenes, we observe as basket-weavers methodically ply their trade, or mushroom farmers water the hay bales on which the fungi are cultivated.
Lê is interested in all the activity that fills a day, in its movement and sound, and attentive to the busy ecosystem that surrounds and sustains his principal characters. On occasion, we drift from human life altogether, fixating instead on the chatter of monkeys gathered in a mangrove forest, and for a time, serenity sets in. DP Nguyễn Vinh Phúc shoots all these tableaux — natural or domestic, pained or peaceful — with equally watchful, exacting composure and deep-shadowed still-life lighting. We’re certainly invited to peer into these frames, for flickers of buried human feeling or stray signs of the uncanny, but “Hearing” encourages the kind of stillness that puts, well, hearing first: Lê’s gorgeous, secretive film demands you lean in and listen to it.
