Faith Is Elusive Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, So Bask In The Filmmaking Instead

Having a kid irrevocably changes a person’s life, and those changes are doubled when the kid arrives orphaned by tragedy. Two lives in flux, and the new parent is responsible for shepherding a little one through formative grief, on top of traditional parenting duties. But Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ), the laconic protagonist of Phạm Thiên Ân’s first feature, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, handles this abrupt charge with laid-back ease, as if his every experience has prepared him for the circumstance of his sister-in-law’s death and subsequent custodianship of his nephew, Đạo (Nguyễn Thịnh). Most people would be rattled by these events. Thiện rises to the occasion with preternatural nonchalance.

His comfort with this solemn trust is not by any means the movie’s most fantastical quality. Ân follows in the footsteps of the greats of slow cinema, notably Tsai Ming-liang, Edward Yang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, both in terms of taking his sweet time allowing Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’s story to breathe, and in terms of judiciously applying surrealist brushstrokes to an aesthetic that verges on neo-realist. Static compositions provide structure for Ân’s hypnagogic digressions; there is a rigid formality to much of the filmmaking here, and from that flows a handful of languid sequences that flirt with otherworldliness. The puzzle the audience gets to solve is whether these moments are either dreamlike or actual dreams,  though it’s possible some fall under column A and others column B.

What’s certain is that Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is in conversation with spirituality. Ân starts that discourse in Saigon, where Thiện’s sister-in-law perishes in a motorcycle accident that Đạo survives, then ferries it to Vietnam’s countryside, and all the while filters it through Thiện’s own struggles with faith and the irrational nature of belief. His internal misgivings about the divine are something of a contradiction; how to express confusion over God when he’s apparently capable of whipping up miracles of his own? When Thiện meets Đạo at the hospital, the boy asks about his mother; having no heart to deliver the grim news, Thiện distracts Đạo with card tricks, which would be cool but unremarkable if they didn’t look suspiciously like actual magic.

A flick of the wrist, and a card appears; another flick, another card. Thiện has short sleeves. There’s no place to hide his kings or queens. Once the scene cuts to an office where Thiện fills out necessary paperwork, we think nothing of the cards; maybe Ân is smirking on the other side of the camera, playing a trick on us. Then, after attending his sister-in-law’s funeral rites, Thiện indulges Đạo’s request for more magic tricks while winding down for bedtime; this time, he fills an empty vase, first with water, then with fish. Even if he had sleeves, the illusion is a stumper neither Penn nor Teller could figure out. 

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell invests wonder in Thiện’s low-key wizardry, the same way David Gordon Green does in the final shot of his 2015 film Manglehorn, where Al Pacino opens a locked van with an imaginary key. But the film couches its dilemma of belief in this same dynamic, because if an apparent conjurer like Thiện can’t bring himself to buy the existence of the big man in the sky, then the rest of us have very little reason to, either – though supporting characters do anyways. In a way, Ân has subjected Thiện to a kind of doom. Some people embrace faith, while others have found an earthly nirvana by way of acceptance, but rather than finding relief in their convictions and tranquility, Thiện grows more entrenched in his apprehensions. It’s surprisingly hard to find God in the self-assuredness of strangers and erstwhile crushes, like Thảo (Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh), formerly the object of Thiện’s youthful affection, but currently a nun.

Ân obscures God’s presence in the world through meticulous, thoughtful filmmaking. This is perhaps the intent behind Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’s combination of long takes and still frames: To force the audience to look at each image for minutes at a time like they’re poring over a Where’s Waldo? book, combing for proof of the Alpha and the Omega in Saigon’s neon lights and unfeeling concrete, or deep-green jungles teeming with life. The approach is effective, if somewhat merciless; God is nowhere to be found. But maybe Ân doesn’t actually expect anyone to discover what his lead character can’t, and absorption in cinematographer Đinh Duy Hưng’s photography is the nobler pursuit. Hưng’s eye for detail is so sharp that even in those sauntering long takes, where the scenery hardly changes with each passing minute, there’s always something new to pick out – a texture, a color, a backgrounded action. 

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell premiered at Cannes last year, where the jury awarded it with the Caméra d’Or – the festival’s “best first feature” competition. Ân’s work here is refined to the point of mastery, as if he’s been making movies for decades. Perhaps the more impressive accomplishment here is comprehension. The second half of the film follows Thiện on the road to find his estranged brother, and if a three-hour jaunt through Vietnam in search of faith and family sounds like an insurmountable challenge, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is anything but. It’s a journey jammed with pleasures we can all appreciate, and canopied by questions we all ask.

Director: Phạm Thiên Ân
Writer: Phạm Thiên Ân
Starring: Lê Phong Vũ, Nguyễn Thịnh, Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh, Vũ Ngọc Mạnh
Release Date: January 19, 2024

Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.