Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Di, Ha Le Diem
Intro:
… not only exposes its audience to people and customs they may not be aware of, but it also offers up a fascinating, thought-provoking portrait of the filmmaker as an individual … must see.
The 14-year-old subject of Ha Le Diem’s heartbreaking documentary, Di, is telling the camera how she’s just found out that her boyfriend is cheating on her. As can be expected nowadays, it was all done through the medium of social media. He’s now messaging her apologies that she gleefully reads out with no intent of getting back with him. All very classic teen stuff. The only real thing that makes Di stand out is that she lives in the mountains of northern Vietnam with her parents and siblings. Di is Hmong, whose people have different customs that clash with the Vietnam government.
When we first meet Di, she is playing a game with her friends where one of them pretends to be a kidnapped bride fleeing from her captors. Essentially chasey, but the girls’ game has a dark truth to it. Bride kidnapping is a Hmong custom, where a boy is allowed to abscond with a girl of his choice and force her into marriage. It happened to Di’s sister, who is 17 and expecting her second child, as well as her mother. Happy to flirt with boys and be rude with her friends, Di has her sights set on finishing her studies so that she can eventually leave the farm.
And you’ve already probably worked out where this is all heading.
While the spectre of the custom looms heavy over the first half over the film, when it does happen it doesn’t come with men leaping out of the shadows or Di being whisked away in the dead of night. It happens on a misty afternoon with Diem watching. Waiting for her subject as she returns from school, Diem films Di walking down the road with a boy we have seen her flirting with earlier. As they pass the camera, the boy says, ‘Don’t follow us.’ The filmmaker queries what he means by that, and he assures her that he isn’t going to kidnap her. We, like Diem, can only watch them walk off into the horizon together.
From this point on, Diem’s film becomes an exercise in deciding – with documentary filmmaking – when the observer becomes the participant. And when that becomes clear, how does that sit with the audience? Diem tells us at the beginning that she knew Di before she started her documentary. Indeed, Di and her family refer to her throughout; the camera is assuredly not neutral, it’s fair to say.
Once Di is with her captor – a boy who admits at one point that he is too young to have kidnapped her – we see Diem trying balance her neutrality as a filmmaker with her obvious affection for Di. Things come to a head when, after a series of events, Di is back at home, but is soon dragged out by her captor’s family. With her mum merely watching and trying to soothe her daughter, Diem decides to take action. It’s a scene that sends a shiver up your spine and like the director, you want to protect the young girl.
And here’s the thing to take away from Children of the Mist: for the most part, Diem’s lens never judges those in front of it. Even when Di’s mum laments the fact that her daughter being married off means that no one will be around to feed the pigs when she’s drunk! Even when her father makes jokes about kidnapping Diem and selling her (ha-ha, dad!). When Diem finally crosses that line and almost becomes part of the narrative, it’s Di that she opens to about how she really feels about what is happening.
Children of the Mist not only exposes its audience to people and customs they may not be aware of, but it also offers up a fascinating, thought-provoking portrait of the filmmaker as an individual. Someone who, as can be forgotten, is watching events unfold like the viewer. This is a genuine must see.
