Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Movie)

An uncommonly strong debut from the Vietnamese director Pham Thien An asks existential questions without answers.The complex dance of doubt and religious faith is frequently cast in terms of a quest. One might be “on a faith journey,” or be “a lost soul,” or be “searching” for meaning and the divine — all images derived from the idea of starting at one place, keeping your eyes open, and ending up, ultimately, in some final destination. Small wonder that many human cultures imagine a wander in the wilderness, literal or metaphorical, as pivotal to one’s initiation into maturity. Some fresh wisdom and revelation comes from walking around in circles for a while.This spiraling, meandering trek is the underlying structure of “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” an uncommonly strong feature debut from the Vietnamese director Pham Thien An. The protagonist, Thien (Le Phong Vu), is dragged into a voyage of his own. Having grown up in a rural village, he now lives in Saigon, where he works and hangs out with his friends. It seems that any faith or belief in the soul or the transcendent has disappeared completely into his hard, cold urban exterior.But one day, sitting at a roadside cafe discussing faith with two buddies — one of whom is selling his possessions and moving to the countryside to seek a life of communion with the divine — he observes a terrible motorcycle crash.Initially he thinks little of the crash. You get the sense he’s seen a lot of this sort of thing before. But soon after, while he lies on a table in the early stages of an erotic massage, his phone rings. “God is calling,” he tells the masseuse. “God?” she asks. “It’s my client,” he replies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More