{"id":37502,"date":"2026-08-11T00:17:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T19:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=37502"},"modified":"2026-08-11T00:17:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T19:17:35","slug":"an-arresting-study-in-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=37502","title":{"rendered":"An Arresting Study in Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tIn Vietnamese director L\u00ea B\u1ea3o\u2019s new film, an extended family confronts various rifts and estrangements in its ranks; years of silence must give way, slowly and haltingly, to communication. That the film is called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/hearing\/\" id=\"auto-tag_hearing\" data-tag=\"hearing\">Hearing<\/a>\u201d might sound awfully pat, but nothing is so obvious in this sensuous, intuitive mood piece, which consistently surprises with its spare, searching narrative and radically layered technique. In his second feature \u2014 following 2021\u2019s highly accomplished \u201cTaste,\u201d which won a jury prize in Berlin\u2019s former Encounters competition \u2014 L\u00ea continues to invite comparisons with rigorously experimental formalists like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pedro Costa, while cutting a path between closely observed domestic drama and freely ambient surrealism that feels his own. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tPremiering in the main competition at Locarno, this is challenging arthouse fare of the type that may need continued festival exposure and accolades to persuade distributors to take a chance on it. \u201cHearing\u201d could have an easier route to specialist streaming platforms, though its exquisite technical qualities \u2014 in particular, Vincent Villa\u2019s intricate sound design \u2014 are best showcased in theaters. Singapore production company E&amp;W Films\u2019 recent credits include Cannes selections \u201cViet and Nam\u201d and \u201c9 Temples to Heaven,\u201d which is a fair indication of the new film\u2019s woozy, hypnotic slow-cinema lane.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tAs indicated by the titles of his two features to date (plus the 2014 short \u201cScent\u201d), L\u00ea\u2019s cinema is sense-led, and a bravura opening sequence establishes this film\u2019s reliance on sonic texture and contrast. In a packed, bustling restaurant, collective chatter reaches cacophonous levels, which is where mechanic Ninh (Nguy\u1ec5n Qu\u1ed1c Tu\u1ea5n) comes in. His job is the installation of decibel meters, which trigger a glaring blue light when excessive levels of noise are reached \u2014 as happens here, though the rowdy patrons aren\u2019t deterred. We cut away to a florist above the establishment, where workers stand taut in stark half-light, as if petrified by the din below; only when one neighbor, driven to breaking point, throws a flower pot off the balcony is there a brief, blessed, slightly bemused hush.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tBut noise is release in this dusty working-class community, where lives tend to unfold in unassuming quiet. We see that cathartic shift in volume again at a local nightclub on the edge of the forest, where villagers of all ages dance manically to deep, throbbing techno music \u2014 Ninh among them. His days are altogether more muted: He lives with his elderly mother (Ng\u1ecdc T\u1ea3n), following his separation from his wife (Kh\u00e1nh Huy\u1ec1n), who has moved with their two children to her parents\u2019 house nearby. He yearns to reconcile, but she can\u2019t forgive his past domestic violence. Ninh\u2019s parents\u2019 marriage was destroyed by similar abuse, though in their case, it\u2019s his rural-dwelling father (Minh H\u00f9ng), the perpetrator, who refuses to make peace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tSilence is not calm in \u201cHearing,\u201d however, and it\u2019s certainly not contentment. L\u00ea\u2019s film is marked throughout by wounded reticence and nervous distance, and conversation, when it comes, doesn\u2019t break the tension. Ninh\u2019s mother awkwardly reminisces to him about her physical relationship with his father; Ninh frankly and regretfully tells his children about how he beat their mother. In work, at least, quiet is productive and purposeful: In some of the film\u2019s most mesmerising scenes, we observe as basket-weavers methodically ply their trade, or mushroom farmers water the hay bales on which the fungi are cultivated. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tL\u00ea is interested in all the activity that fills a day, in its movement and sound, and attentive to the busy ecosystem that surrounds and sustains his principal characters. On occasion, we drift from human life altogether, fixating instead on the chatter of monkeys gathered in a mangrove forest, and for a time, serenity sets in. DP Nguy\u1ec5n Vinh Ph\u00fac shoots all these tableaux \u2014 natural or domestic, pained or peaceful \u2014 with equally watchful, exacting composure and deep-shadowed still-life lighting. We\u2019re certainly invited to peer into these frames, for flickers of buried human feeling or stray signs of the uncanny, but \u201cHearing\u201d encourages the kind of stillness that puts, well, hearing first: L\u00ea\u2019s gorgeous, secretive film demands you lean in and listen to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Vietnamese director L\u00ea B\u1ea3o\u2019s new film, an extended family confronts various rifts and estrangements in its ranks; years of silence must give way, slowly and haltingly, to communication. That the film is called \u201cHearing\u201d might sound awfully pat, but nothing is so obvious in this sensuous, intuitive mood piece, which consistently surprises with its&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hearing.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}