Both these movies feature return journeys that are difficult but rewarding.

1.
Rurangi
2020, Max Currie

This one sees Caz (Elz Carrad), a trans man, coming home to his home town in rural New Zealand not only for the first time in 10 years, but also for the first time since his mother died, and for the first time as a man.

That's a tough thing to do, and Caz's body language almost exclusively radiates defensiveness. It's not that he faces out-and-out hostility. His best friend, Anahera (Awhina-Rose Ashby), is delighted to see him, whatever his gender label. His former boyfriend, Jem (Arlo Green), is confused, but obviously still very fond of Caz -- and maybe still in love.

But Caz has lost his bearings. His father (Kirk Torrance) is initially cold. Not only does he not understand Caz's transition, but he finds it hard to forgive him for not coming back when his mother was dying. When Caz is unwillingly drawn into campaigning for an issue his father is championing, he is patronized by a biased chair who seeks to conflate the issue in question with "alternative" agendas and "lifestyle choices". He is also haunted by the suicide of a prominent (outwardly straight) sports star with whom he had an affair while he was away in Auckland. We witness a very moving public breakdown when Caz, in the role of a trans activist, addresses a mental health support group, but cannot offer them rosy words.


New Zealand, 2001-02

Although it's Caz who has had to grapple with the most dramatic life-change, various other characters are also working through issues relating to identity. His father (motivated by the suspected connection between his wife's death and his farm's use of chemical fertilizers) has turned green, much to the chagrin of his fellow-agriculturalists. Anahera is rediscovering her Maori identity. And, having re-encountered Caz, Jem is wondering whether he might not be entirely straight.

So no-one's journey is easy. But this is ultimately a hopeful story. Caz and his dad reconcile. Jem needs to figure things out, but you're confident he'll always be there for Caz.





Rurangi is also exemplary in that all the trans roles (and some non-specific roles as well) are played by trans actors. As writer and co-producer Cole Meyers puts it: "We’re not interested in seeing another story told about us, any more transition stories, trauma or tropes. These are so often about how other people see us, how other people experience us. We want to see stories on screen made by us."

To which you can't help but raise a cheer.





2.
Monsoon
2019, Hong Khaou

This is one of those movies that feels a little underwhelming as you're watching it. There's little dialogue; the soundtrack makes minimal use of music; there are long, lingering, slightly disorientating looks at scenes; there's no strong story arc; and nothing is really resolved at the end (not that movies need to resolve things).

But afterwards, as you think more about it, you start to appreciate its subtleties.




Ha Noi, 2006

It foregrounds Kit (Henry Golding), whose Vietnamese parents fled to the UK when he was six years old. Now that they are dead, he is paying a visit to Viet Nam, where he will ultimately be joined by his brother, so that the two can scatter the parents' ashes. After more than 30 years away, Kit is a stranger. He doesn't even speak the language that well any more.

Michael Tatarski, who knows Viet Nam pretty well, feels the film paints a fair picture: "It was incredibly refreshing to see contemporary Vietnam presented without prejudice or pretense, and I can't think of any recent foreign-produced movies set here that have done this so effectively."

For Tatarski, the movie pinpoints "the tension at the heart of so many families who left their home country to start a new life somewhere else: Kit's parents gave up everything to flee (his father worked for an official in the southern government), yet the country Kit returns to is thriving to the point of being unrecognizable". Certainly, we see lots of modernity and energy (glitzy infrastructure, chic hospitality venues, crazy-busy traffic intersections) alongside the more sedate and traditional shots such as the "scenting" of lotus tea.



Kit experiences many such disconnects. He suddenly realizes, for example, that the presents he brings to the family of Lee (David Tran), a childhood friend (a tin of shortbread emblazoned with the Queen’s face, a bottle of whisky -- and a water filter), might be seen to smack of condescension.

And there's an awkwardness surrounding this relationship. It was Kit's mother who lent the money to get Lee's phone shop going, and this obviously weighs on him somewhat. He also knows more than his guest does about the circumstances of Kit's family's departure. Whereas Kit remembers a journey undertaken in solidarity, Lee tells him that his father (who fell under suspicion after reunification) had first attempted to leave alone. Lee's family also tried to leave, but didn't succeed. They thought of making fake documents, to establish a bogus relationship to Kit's mother that would allow her to sponsor them to move to the UK. "So why didn't you?" Kit asks. "We have the shop now," Lee replies, obliquely. They're doing OK financially, but obviously don't have too much room for manoeuvre.

Constraint is also evidenced in Linh (Molly Harris), a young guide whose art tour Kit follows when he goes to Ha Noi: "My parents are always talking about the war. My grandfather died in it... I want to travel. But they've spent so much money on my education. All their savings."



Another side to the geopolitical story is represented by Lewis (Parker Sawyers), a young American who runs a clothing company based in Viet Nam. His father fought in the war, and was wounded, eventually discharged, and "sent back home to begin his life again". A few years before Lewis and Kit meet, he shoots himself. Obviously, this weighs on Lewis. The young people in Viet Nam, on the other hand, "don't care about the war any more. They want their dreams... their careers."

Lewis is Kit's love interest in the movie. I wondered, while watching, why Kit needed to be gay, as this orientation doesn't particularly factor into the plot. The answer, of course, is why shouldn't he be? As Henry Golding comments: "It was so beautiful the way that his sexuality didn’t even matter to the bigger picture or the story at hand. Normalizing a human being’s sexuality is what we all strive for."



Golding's casting was a talking-point, however, not only because he was a straight guy playing a gay character, but also because he isn't Vietnamese.

What Golding "is" actually turns out to be very interesting. He was born right here in Kuching, to an English father and an Iban mother. His early childhood was spent in Terengganu, West Malaysia, and the family moved to the UK when he was eight. He moved back to Malaysia at the age of 21, however, so his own experience to some extent parallels Kit's.



There's a parallel also with the director's life. Khaou was born in Cambodia, but his family fled the Khmer Rouge when he was a baby, and he spent his early childhood in Viet Nam. At the age of eight, after the reunification of Viet Nam, he and his family fled as "boat people", eventually ending up in England. As he explains, "When you are a refugee and you've been displaced, there's this constant struggle where we don't ever feel we belong." He himself returned to Viet Nam -- for the first time in 30 years -- to research for the film: "The place I left was extremely poor and we lived in difficult conditions. It had changed beyond all recognition and I went through a lot of feelings going back... Kit wants to understand his place in a culture, to try to capture a past he feels his parents denied him. What he comes to understand, though, is that his parents actually liberated him. There’s this romantic notion that you have to go back to your past to move forward but there’s no definitive answer to be had from the experience, just a slight shift or change in you. You learn not to hanker for the past, but to live with it."

Molly Harris, who plays Linh, can also chart similarities between her own story and Kit's. Ethnically Vietnamese, Harris was adopted, as an eight-week-old baby, by a Dutch mother and an English father. The family left Viet Nam, and lived in various countries. She learnt English and Dutch, but not Vietnamese. When she returned to Viet Nam at the age of 14, her experience mirrored Kit's: "I really understand that Kit doesn’t know how to feel, because that’s how I feel."

All these layers of lived experience filter into the gentle and luminous final product that is Monsoon. Peter Bradshaw puts it excellently: "[The movie] is about a homecoming that isn’t quite a homecoming, a reckoning with something not exactly there, an attempted reconciliation with people and places that can’t really be negotiated with."

Definitely a movie for our times.