In silence and gentleness, filmmaker Charles Olivier-Michaud found the right tone to adapt Kim Thúy’s novel. It tells with sensitivity, and in an expressive setting, the author’s immigration journey, through the eyes of Tinh (Chloé Djandji), her alter ego. At 10 years old, she arrived in Granby with her family from boat people fleeing Vietnam at war.
As in the successful novel of the same name published in 2009, the film oscillates between memories of the writer’s native country and scenes relating her arrival in Quebec. The temporality and spatial setting of the story are, however, less fragmented than in the novel. We mainly focus on the first year of the Vietnamese family in the small Estrie town.
It is only at the end of the film that young Tinh tames the Quebec territory, trying her hand at snowshoeing or visiting a sugar shack with her family — a rite of passage par excellence. We spend most of the time in domestic spaces, where the emotion of the tender gaze of the protagonist, silent, observing her environment from a distance, is captured in tight and symmetrical shots.
Little by little, the visual field widens, while Tinh blossoms – or rather flowers, since the same floral metaphors are used in the film as in the novel. We also call upon the gentleness of Kim Thúy’s writing. A softness echoed by the warm and slightly desaturated colors of the images by Jean-François Lord as director of photography.
Ru surprises where we didn’t expect it, that is to say in its staging, which proves to be as poetic as it is inventive. A breath of fresh air on the often nauseating genre that is blockbuster Quebecois, at least from an aesthetic point of view. If it does not reinvent the wheel, the film dares to use expressive framing and shadow play, and does justice to the unadorned beauty of the writer’s pen.
Sensitive and informed look
Without a strong narrative arc, however, the film suffers from some lengths. Since we mainly witness the first steps of Tinh’s family in Quebec, the evolution of the characters remains (too) subtle, and the film sometimes seems to us like a calculated and uninspired sequence of scenes on the difficulties of the experience immigrant.
We are at least relieved to see that Charles Olivier-Michaud avoids the trap of excessive self-congratulation when it comes to welcoming Quebecers. He refocuses his filmmaker’s gaze on the experience lived by his protagonist, a gaze whose sensitivity is increased due to his close collaboration with the author.
Some scenes still leave us incredulous: during her visit to the sugar shack, at the invitation of her Quebec “godfathers” (Patrice Robitaille and Karine Vanasse), Tinh becomes emotional after her parents tell their hosts the violence they suffered in Vietnam. In the minutes that follow, she seems confused, torn between her feeling of alienation from the culture of Quebec and her gratitude towards its inhabitants. She then retreats to cry alone. So far, we understand the idea.
Then, in the background, while we still see her crying, the Quebec hosts start singing The little one bhappiness and come to reassure her. But if Tinh (the lively Kim Thúy in the making) undoubtedly finds happiness in the land of Félix Leclerc, this juxtaposition seems almost crude given the little girl’s distress.
Ru nevertheless remains touching as a whole, thanks in part to the quiet strength of Chloé Djandji’s acting and the charming mosaic of supporting characters. We find in particular the MM. An and Minh from the novel, endearing old men who also cross paths with Tinh boat people. One is a neighbor, the other, an employee of the restaurant where his father works. The latter gave Kim Thúy, she said, “the desire to write”. And it is by rightly evoking the emancipatory power of creation that the film pays a beautiful tribute to the author.