85m/Not Rated
Prose (Story): Kit (Crazy Rich Asian's Henry Golding) is a British-Vietnamese man who is returning to the country of his birth for the first time since he and his family fled over three decades earlier, when Kit was just a small child, during the Vietnam War. Once in Saigon, he connects with a second cousin, Lee (David Tran), whom he used to play with as a child (which Lee remembers, though Kit does not), but Kit's unfamiliarity with everything from the language to the geography to the culture of his long-ago home - which he's returned to in the hopes of finding a place to scatter his parents' ashes - weighs heavily on his weary shoulders. Though finding both solace and unexpected romance with another American in Saigon named Lewis (Parker Sawyers), who's living in Vietnam to work on starting up his own clothing company, the story remains the study of a man come home ... to a home he doesn't recognize, as he seeks to do the right thing by his parents and family.
Don's (Review): There are so many wonderful points that make up Monsoon, but the best of it can be summed up in two words: Henry Golding. So far removed from his obscenely-rich, jet-setting, most-wanted bachelor from Crazy Rich Asians as to be a bit of shock (in the best way), here Golding turns in a masterful performance in which he conveys, with a gesture or a look, a level of emotional countenance that many lesser actors couldn't put out in half a page of dialogue. Kit is a man on a mission, trying to do the right thing yet clearly so much a fish out of the proverbial water, you can feel his confusion, angst or resignation in every frame. Quite smartly and beautifully, the film plays up the fact that Kit is gay with zero fanfare; it is simply a part of who he is as a person, not a vital or even secondary part of the story - a genuine relief to find in a film today. Those expecting this to be a romance, or some high-concept exploration of race or the Vietnam conflict, will be sorely disappointed; Monsoon is a simple, straightforward, slow-moving (maybe too slow, for some) character study of a man searching for threads to a past he barely remembers, to better understand his present. And, in Henry Golding, it contains one of the most beautiful, understated performance this reviewer has seen in years. 4/5 stars
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