Where Venice has starry Oscar vehicles lining up for a slot each year and Cannes has established itself as the home base for A-list auteurs, Berlin has always tended to score with the discovery of new, raw talents. It made sense, then, for Berlinale’s artistic director Carlo Chatrian to create an additional competitive sidebar dedicated to experimental cinema when he took office last year.
The inaugural edition of the Encounters section, modeled after Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and Venice’s Orrizonti, was an underreported success. The eclectic, audacious lineup featured among others the Oscar-shortlisted narration-free animal doc GUNDA, the controversial cyborg cautionary tale THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN, the wonderfully trippy puzzle box that is ISABELLA, and one of my favorite films of the year, THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS. Diving into the sophomore edition this year, expectations were understandably high. And it’s quite a relief to find something as arresting and wholly unconventional as Vietnamese director Lê Bảo’s filmmaking debut TASTE.
To provide a synopsis would be a silly way to describe the visually driven, highly experiential film. To the extent that the concept of “scenes” applies at all in the case of TASTE, few bother with dialogue, let alone exposition. Instead, it’s all about subjectivity and the power of the image. Lively, meticulously composed tableaux of human behavior and emotions that suggest, provoke and resonate.
The opening minutes set the quiet, captivating tone. We see a group of muscular young men training, lounging, bathing in some anonymous, sensually lit quarters. One dark-skinned man has a cast on his leg and struggles to keep up with the other guys. But otherwise the nameless hero (played by Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga) goes through his daily routines without self-consciousness. In between intriguing snapshots of the protagonist’s life, the camera cuts to another nondescript location where a team of middle-aged women spend their days sewing giant sheets of tarpaulin into hot air balloons.
Although no word is spoken and not much is known at all about the characters before the 20-minute mark, the film grabs you with the intensity and purity of its images. It gives undivided attention to the face of a weeping seamstress, letting light and shadow bring out the promise of stories behind every blemish, every line. The effect is eerily intimate, like watching a portrait come to life. The camera also lingers on cracked walls and floors, on dilapidated houses rotting in the water, on massive canvas crinkling in the wind like an ocean disturbed, and conjures a vivid sense of place that transcends any verbal description.
At some point the black protagonist joins the older ladies in their hermetic existence. In scenes that observe their modest joint lifestyle, we see a bond, a circle of care slowly take shape. Eventually, we learn about the circumstances that brought him from Nigeria to Vietnam and the injury that got him kicked out of the local soccer club. One of the women, for her part, reveals a story of abandonment in the casual tone of someone recalling a wound that has long scabbed over. These personal tragedies are shared without fanfare, but subtly fill in the blanks of an emotional equation and make you consider everything in a new light.
Influences of some of slow cinema’s masters are apparent throughout TASTE. Aesthetically, the film’s look and texture are most reminiscent of the works of Pedro Costa (whose resplendent VITALINA VARELA was unfortunately left off Oscar’s International Film shortlist). DP Nguyễn Vinh Phúc has a way of shooting black – whether it’s the hair of the women, the ebony skin of the man, or the mostly darkened interiors – that’s incredibly lush and expressive. In terms of composition, Lê is evidently inspired by Tsai Ming-Liang. Prolonged close-up’s that accentuate the subject’s loneliness are heavily featured. An early scene that sees the protagonist eat a slice of watermelon while watching a child do the same on his computer has all the hallmarks of a classic Tsai shot. I also see a little Apichatpong Weerasethakul in some scenes that have a more pronounced spiritual undertone. While Lê is not yet effortlessly fluent in a cinematic language he obviously favors, the maturity of voice in his very first film is still mighty impressive.
TASTE is ravishing, challenging and definitely not for everyone – but truthfully I would be very disappointed if they selected a film for Encounters that is for everyone. Festivals should, as their raison d’être, offer a platform to artists who take us beyond our comfort zone. With that in mind, I say: Bring it on, Berlinale.
