80
Beautifully shot and subtly delivered, Monsoon offers a poignant picture of the emigrant experience as well as Vietnam’s post-war hangover, while cementing Henry Golding’s position as a leading man to watch.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
As he did in Lilting, Khaou in Monsoon finely sketches the complex inner lives and identities of a small group of characters and plugs them into a narrative that unfolds gradually but precisely, so audiences have the time to consider the work's larger thematic concerns.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by David Lewis
Monsoon, an offbeat story about a man’s cultural dislocation in Vietnam, is more of a slow drip than a torrential downpour. It’s a lovely film that suddenly and magically can wash over you, then lose you in its opacities.
70
Screen Daily by Demetrios Matheou
The journey is definitely worth making, as both people and places lead Kit slowly towards some sort of rapprochement with his identity.
70
Monsoon is a graceful and truthfully irresolute investigation into the strange, often poignantly unreciprocated relationship that many first- and second-generation emigrants have with the far-off foreign country of the past.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is about a homecoming that isn’t quite a homecoming, a reckoning with something not exactly there, an attempted reconciliation with people and places that can’t really be negotiated with.
83
This is a gentle and joyous film not to be slept on, even as its low-key aura lulls you into a soothed state of mind.
67
Austin Chronicle by Steve Davis
As Monsoon unhurriedly paces towards an open-ended conclusion, you sense Kit will be in a better place than the one he occupied when he first stepped off the plane.
63
A delicate, observant, and rather too quiescent drama of coming home to a strange land, Monsoon is an interesting change of pace for star Henry Golding (“Crazy Rich Asians”) and another musing on diaspora by the Cambodia-born British filmmaker Hong Khaou.