DOI MAT AM DUONG/ THE EYES
Vietnam, 2020, 100 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Nhat Trung.
A film for audiences interested to see the developments of Vietnamese cinema as the 21st-century progresses. It is also a film for those who enjoy “supernatural” elements in the human dramas, made very popular by many of the horror dramas from Japan.
The film is categorised as: comedy, drama, fantasy. Well, yes. Well not exactly.
The setting is an affluent Vietnamese family, comfortable home, professional backgrounds, he a doctor, she and artist. As the film opens, the artist has had a serious accident, has had an eye/cornea transplant, is attended to by her doctor husband. They have a little daughter. But, the wife suffers from amnesia – and, not only that, is haunted by seeing a young woman everywhere she looks, even encountering her as she looks in the mirror.
The artist visits galleries, sees her work, employs a diligent young man as her assistant. Her husband tries to support her. So far the film plays as drama, with some comic touches, especially in the eccentricities of the young assistant.
However, there are increasing strange encounters with the dead woman, some nightmare sequences. And then the artist wants to find more and more about the young woman who was a donor for the eyes, the young assistant getting information, taking her to visit the house, more information about the woman, sexually provocative and having affairs, the house empty but a security guard present, his giving some information, others in the vicinity not wanting to speak, especially the man who employed the young woman at the club.
The film then moves into melodrama, more reality about the young woman, the audience seeing her in action, her relationship with the artist’s husband, violent encounters, brutal attacks, deaths – and the revelation that the young assistant is the dead woman’s brother, which leads to more violent encounters between the young man, the doctor husband and the wife.
Rather a mixture of conventions and audience response depending on the interesting drama or the interest in fantasy/horror.
