The Vertical Ray of the Sun

Director: Tran Anh Hung

2000 / 112min / 35mm

There are darknesses lurking under the radiant surface of Tran’s film—the last in his Vietnam Trilogy and his first collaboration with Mark Lee Ping-bing—about three sisters in Hanoi reunited by the respective anniversaries of their parents’ deaths. What one first notices, though, is how marvelously awash it is in light—an enchanting light, a benediction which gives the such rituals as the preparation of a memorial banquet or the intimate morning routines of co-habiting siblings, so lovingly captured here, a quality of the hyperreal. A spellbinding movie about everyday frustrations and their everyday compensations, and a work not just to be seen, but luxuriated in.