Kit (Henry Golding) has just arrived in Vietnam, Saigon to be precise, after decades away from his homeland. He and his family left when he was a tot, refugees from the war and its aftermath, and they ended up in Britain where he was brought up, with the result that he really does not know the point of his origin very well. What better than to take a break from his life and job in Britain and pay this place an extended visit, meeting one man he knew as a kid, and taking the time to investigate the city and maybe find out more about his background. There's always the chance he can meet someone there he can hook up with for a little recreation too, a gay bar he can walk into, make a new friend, if only for the night...
Monsoon was, when you boiled it down, a Vietnam War film except that there were absolutely no war sequences contained within, we never saw anyone pick up a weapon, and there were not even words exchanged in anger - there was a little wariness, a little umbrage perhaps, but on the whole characters were civil to one another. This was only Golding's third lead in a motion picture, from what seemed to have been a stratospheric rise to fame from his beginnings as a travel television show presenter, whereupon he adopted a new role as a professional handsome man in Crazy Rich Asians which had many audiences wondering, hey, who is that guy and why haven't we heard about him before (assuming you were not one of those who had caught him on the small screen).
Golding quickly became a role model for British Asians, for there was nothing stereotypical about his roles, and that appeared to be entirely deliberate which led us to here, a low budget indie, effectively, where he got to wander around Saigon and Hanoi and look photogenic while those watching got to read all sorts of deep and meaningful emotions into his placid features. It was a deceptively relaxing movie - some would tell you it was boring, but there is a difference between very low key and an outright yawnfest - but there was, as you suspect while taking it in, more beneath the surface than was apparent at first glance. It was that history that was continually referred to, nothing rammed down your throat but overall surprisingly subtly alluded to since the new Vietnamese generations did not identify with the conflict of the past.
Yet Kit does, indeed it defines his life since if it had never happened he would have been raised in the Far East and not have had to flee as one of the notorious boat people (the timeline is not too clear in this, Golding looks too young to have been one of those particular refugees, but maybe this was set before the date it was actually released). Kit meets Lewis (Parker Sawyers), an American abroad, and begins an affair, more comfortable with this Westerner than he was with his childhood friend who he worries he was patronising to when they met again after all those years. The message here was that Vietnam and the United States could set aside their differences and find common ground just as Kit and Lewis do: they have strong links to the war in their personal experience, but that concept of the aftermath was vital for it meant you could move on from the turmoil, just as the nation of Vietnam had, and become a more peaceful, accepting soul. On the whole, if you adjusted to its gentle pacing Monsoon could be a positive work to appreciate.
[Interviews and a couple of deleted scenes on Peccadillo's Blu-ray.]
