The muted color palette, the shadowy interiors that envelop the characters, the faded French architecture and the flooding rain are suitable metaphors for yearning, love unconsummated and love abused in this Vietnamese exploration of relationships.
The beautiful Duyen marries the infantile cab driver and mother's boy Hai. When he drinks himself into a catatonic state at the wedding celebration while his bride waits expectantly upstairs the portents for a happy marriage are ominous. Cam, Duyen's friend, is secretly in love with her, and bitter about her friend's marriage, arranges an encounter with the Lothario Tho. The shock she experiences when the man literally pounces on her turns to fascination after the relationship with Hai sours. She succumbs to Tho's advances but her sexual awakening brings only uncertainty in a life she once assessed as uncomplicated and pure.
Adrift is a quiet, understated film that subtly leads the viewer into a world of dampened expectations and lives unfulfilled.
The beautiful Duyen marries the infantile cab driver and mother's boy Hai. When he drinks himself into a catatonic state at the wedding celebration while his bride waits expectantly upstairs the portents for a happy marriage are ominous. Cam, Duyen's friend, is secretly in love with her, and bitter about her friend's marriage, arranges an encounter with the Lothario Tho. The shock she experiences when the man literally pounces on her turns to fascination after the relationship with Hai sours. She succumbs to Tho's advances but her sexual awakening brings only uncertainty in a life she once assessed as uncomplicated and pure.
Adrift is a quiet, understated film that subtly leads the viewer into a world of dampened expectations and lives unfulfilled.