The Spirits Speak in Silence

Read Time:5 Minute, 20 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Ripe (chín)
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Genre: Drama, Short
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 19m
Director(s): Solara Thanh Bình Đặng
Writer(s): Solara Thanh Bình Đặng
Cast: Hayley Ngọc Mai, Samuel An, Công Ninh
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: In just nineteen minutes, RIPE achieves what many features spend an hour or two chasing: a world thick with history and spiritual resonance. Writer-director Solara Thanh Bình Đặng roots the film in the Mekong Delta, an ecological crossroads where fertility and precarity intertwine. The story follows a young woman faced with a decision that has shaped generations before her—whether to accept an arranged marriage for the sake of her family’s farm. What could read as a familiar coming-of-age negotiation is refracted through a lens, where the land itself and unseen forces press against her choice.

Đặng’s framing is as much about inheritance as it is about autonomy. The farm becomes both a metaphor and a mirror. It stands in for the body, the womb, and the cycle of giving while also symbolizing the loneliness of being harvested, exported, and consumed. Through this, RIPE ties the fate of women in the Delta to agricultural pulses: both are expected to give, both are commodities in global and familial economies, both fall when they are ready, whether the world cares or not.

The director’s statement provides further clarity: this story isn’t an isolated fable, but a reflection of real life. Women in the Delta often become migrant brides, navigating lives split between homelands and the necessity of leaving them. RIPE asks us to consider the emotional weight—fear, sorrow, excitement, hope—while leaving space for viewers to project their own interpretations. The result is less didactic than meditative, a mood piece that hovers between realism and myth.

RIPE benefits from cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj’s eye. Known for work that lingers on textures and faces, here she embraces the tactile: soil, water, fruit, cloth, skin. Shot on 16mm, the film has an earthy density that resists gloss. Every frame carries a heaviness, a reminder of both climate and circumstance. The choice of film stock feels crucial, making the Delta not just a backdrop but something more.

Hayley Ngọc Mai, as the unnamed young woman, strikes a balance between vulnerability and defiance. Her silence often speaks louder than dialogue—wide-eyed hesitation at one moment, subtle determination the next. Samuel An, as the suitor, represents both possibility and constraint; his presence reminds us that choice is never purely individual when families and traditions lean so heavily. Veteran actor Công Ninh adds depth, grounding the film in authority that lingers even in his quietest moments.

Composer Veron Xio creates an electronic soundscape that flirts with dissonance, layering against natural sounds of insects, water, and wind. This collision of the organic and synthetic emphasizes RIPE’s duality: a story about ancient practices, told in a present shaped by migration, climate crisis, and shifting identities. The score refuses comfort, instead asking us to feel the weight of a choice with no easy resolution.

At nineteen minutes, pacing becomes everything. Đặng understands this, resisting the temptation to over-explain. Scenes unfold in suggestion: a glance, a hand brushing soil, a pause at the threshold. Instead of building to a conventional climax, the film circles its decision, letting atmosphere do the heavy lifting. This can frustrate viewers looking for closure, but for those willing to lean into ambiguity, it’s an effective use of brevity. The ending does not resolve so much as leave you suspended, the choice still echoing.

RIPE also earns its “Vietnamese Gothic” subtitle. Gothic here isn’t castles or cobwebs but unease in the everyday, the presence of the spirit realm felt in half-seen ways. The Mekong is haunted not only by ghosts but also by obligations, by the knowledge that individual bodies are bound to systems of family, ecology, and economics. When RIPE blends the spectral with the practical, it situates itself in a lineage of global Gothic traditions while remaining distinctively Vietnamese.

RIPE stands out for its ability to elevate specificity to universal resonance. Its concerns—arranged marriage, filial duty, ecological precarity—are deeply tied to the Delta. Yet, the film speaks to wider questions: how much of our lives are truly our own, and how do landscapes carry choices across generations? Some viewers may find the symbolism too pronounced or the narrative too elusive, but that tension seems intentional. RIPE is not about telling you what to think; it’s about steeping you in a mood until you recognize the complexity of decisions that are too often simplified. Its ambition lies not in answers but in evocation.

RIPE is both intimate and expansive, a portrait of a young woman and a meditation on cultural survival. Whether viewed as an allegory, an ethnography, or a spiritual encounter, it earns its place in TIFF’s lineup and confirms Đặng as a filmmaker to watch. Gothic, sensual, unsettling, and quietly radical—it falls, like the durian, at just the right moment.

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[photo courtesy of NALTOBEL PRODUCTIONS]

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