"Vertical Summer" - An imaginary Hanoi in recent days

What is Hanoi? What is Hanoi? The search for a specific definition of Hanoi seems to always be present in any thought about this city, but because of that, the possibilities of the capital land keep growing, becoming multi-colored prisms that build up Hanoi. If there are a thousand people looking for Hanoi, there must be a thousand and one images of Hanoi appearing. Tran Anh Hung is also one of them, his Hanoi is the Hanoi of childhood memories, the Hanoi of the past days recorded through each frame of the film Vertical Summer Afternoon.

From a Hanoi through the eyes of an expatriate

Tran Anh Hung is a French director of Vietnamese origin, he graduated from the prestigious film school in France École-Louis-Lumière. Tran Anh Hung's films have a strong personal style and aesthetic cinema that strongly appeals to the senses of the viewer, while at the same time directing the prism into contemporary Vietnamese life. Although Tran Anh Hung always ponders and focuses on the topic of Vietnam, with the influence of typical French cinema and incomplete memories, he has inadvertently imposed the imaginative prism of an outsider. An outsider always attaches the image of Hanoi in "Vertical Summer". From there, Tran Anh Hung has chosen to decode and depict the image of Hanoi in the film by subtly evoking the emotions of the viewer.

Indeed, The Vertical Summer does not delve into the characters' personal lives in order to push the work into the dramatic "melodrama" filmmaking style. The stories now pass by or are fleeting, sometimes serving as a backdrop for reminders of the image of Hanoi. Unlike Vietnamese filmmakers who place Hanoi in the tragic memories of wars or Hanoi as a negative expression of urban life and modern life, Tran Anh Hung has chosen to portray a Hanoi from the lights of an old memory, bringing viewers into an imaginary space with the experience of all the senses.

In that space, Hanoi appears with its aesthetic beauty through the meticulously crafted frames, the meticulous angles and the brilliant colors through the lens of Tran Anh Hung's memories. Hanoi is the fresh green of the tree canopy, of the young lotus buds, the bright red of passion and also returns to the sad color of the blue sea when the secrets are illuminated by the summer light. Perhaps Tran Anh Hung looked back at the old memories of Hanoi with a lens of love, of strong emotions, making the way he recreated this image also have a very aesthetic appearance.

The leisurely atmosphere of Hanoi from the perspective of an expatriate is filled with layers of sounds intertwined between nature and people, such as the sound of a summer shower, the sound of crickets chirping at night, or the sound of conversation at a memorial service combined with a slow rhythm from Trinh Cong Son's old songs. Tran Anh Hung's Hanoi is also the Hanoi of touches, of the feeling of the flesh. The summer sun leaves a sticky feeling on people's skin, but we do not feel uncomfortable with it, we happily wipe away the sweat to continue enjoying the summer.

Tran Anh Hung has taken the audience on a journey to an imaginary Hanoi. From the memories of Hanoi through the eyes of someone who has gone far away from this city, he gives very subtle suggestions about a vibrant Hanoi and at the same time guides our emotions with poetic images.

To a Hanoi of days gone by

And then, when all the senses of an imaginary Hanoi have been satisfied, the audience vaguely feels a sense of nostalgia, sadness, as if remembering a time gone by. The perspective of the room of the two brothers Lien and Hai in the film immediately reminds the audience of the old collective housing areas of Hanoi, a cultural feature of the community of Hanoi people that is gradually fading away. Nowadays, high-rise apartment buildings are springing up at a dizzying speed, leaving the old collective housing areas standing alone and desolate in the middle of the modern city. Besides the image of the old collective housing area as a symbol of Hanoi, Tran Anh Hung also recreated the old houses with yellow moss walls, green wooden doors, and brown tiled roofs as if coming out of a painting by Bui Xuan Phai.

The house of the Suong sisters is located in the middle of the old street, looking out at the street are young girls in ao dai appearing briefly by the window and the slow rotation of bicycles. These images have imprinted in the memories of the people here about the Hanoi city of a long time ago. The shops in the movie Vertical Summer have an old-fashioned style with a couple of small wooden tables and chairs, with a few rustic dishes. It reminds people of the image of Giang Coffee and Lam Coffee still struggling to exist among a series of modern restaurants and cafes that are blooming in the heart of Hanoi.

Even though the vestiges of a distant Hanoi are increasingly hidden, giving way to modernity, the memories of those old days are preserved by the people who miss this place and by the viewers themselves, making Hanoi full of the poetic breath of the color of time.

Although it has reached a level of meticulous perfection and meticulousness in terms of image, Vertical Summer has regrettable shortcomings in the construction of dialogue and dialogue of the actors, especially the role of Tran Nu Yen Khe's youngest sister. Many viewers think that the dialogue of the characters is not really close to life, making it difficult for some people to feel the beauty of the film. But in general, Tran Anh Hung has decoded and successfully portrayed the image of a poetic, emotional Hanoi while still maintaining extremely delicate and discreet nuances.

Elena Bui