Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere

In Vietnamese director Diep Hoang Nguyen’s evocative debut feature, a young and inexperienced student in the slums of Hanoi struggles against external forces and her own wavering feelings to go through with an abortion. Perpetual obstacles delay the procedure, including a lack of cash, her boyfriend’s dubious scheme to raise the money by gambling on cock fights, the inept advice of her transvestite hustler roommate and the pure, raw fear of witnessing abortions in busy Hanoi clinics. As 17-year-old Huyen, Thuy Anh Nguyen effectively relates both the innocence of her character’s rural upbringing and the mischievous slyness acquired from the hard lessons of the city, qualities that reveal the tension between the traditional and the new in today’s Vietnam. Director Diep captures Huyen’s struggles with an expressive and melodic eye, the lush and the carnal aspects of her life countered by the grim and foul realities of existing on the wrong side of the tracks. As the title suggests, the characters, like fledgling birds taking to the sky, find themselves constrained by forces beyond their control, and the full liberation they seek has to be compromised, piece by piece. —Gustavus Kundahl