'Love, Dad' by Diana Cam Van Nguyen: Film Review
The Clermont-awarded and European Film Award nominated (Short Film) 'Love, Dad' by Vietnamese animation director Diana Cam Van Nguyen is now online. Based in the Czech Republic, the animation director crafted a film based on her memories with her father. The author rediscovers letters from prison that her dad used to write.
In the breezy yet poignant film, animation alternates with live-action and fiction with documentary in an epistemological effect to find the meaning behind a broken relationship. The film avoids a moralistic approach (we never get informed of the father's crimes) and steers toward a different direction -suggesting that letters, even when sent from prison, are better testaments of a lived relationship than everything else that follows since.
'Love, Dad' is essentially the chronicle of growing up with a love for Dad but without his cultural burdens. We cannot but notice the collage and the fusion between the boy and the girl when the narration announces that 'Dad wanted a boy' to carry on his name. This visual uncanny (nothing to do with gender per se, only with a distorted belief shows as eloquently as all the letters on the screen -part of a letter parade.
From big to small, this is a hommage to epistolary writing, whose handicraft nature echoes more the corresponding feelings than any photos (which can get distorted or scratched on screen). Water, the enemy of paper, is represented as well—in the form of swimming—representing a community ready to join the activities but sometimes still distant (and even frozen).
We learn about Dad's current situation: he is away from his former family. However, what remains from Diana Cam Van Nguyen's film is a passionate plea for connection; her epistolary means (or snail mail) becomes from a medium of separation (distance presupposed) the only solution in a one-sided correspondence. 'Love, Dad' presents several bonding activities, from fishing to playgrounds; yet, in the end, the long piece of paper that almost engulfs Diana registers the most. This visual celebration of pen and paper is at once engrossing and beautifully pained. This love letter fulfills its purpose admirably and without a single typo.
Watch 'Love, Dad':
Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen
Script-writers: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Lukáš Janičík | Cinematography: Kryštof Melka, Matěj Piňos | Editor: Lukáš Janičík | Sound and music: Viera Marinová | Art direction: Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Darjan Hardi | Animation: Barbora Halířová, David Štumpf, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Vojtěch Domlátil | Starring: Linh Duong, Hong Nhung The Thi, Hoai Trung Le | Producer: Karolína Davidová (13ka)
Co-producers: Tomáš Šimon (FAMU, CZ), Jakub Viktorín (nutprodukcia, SK)
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