Monsoon could stand to be a little more turbulent, but that doesn't mean it won't stir something within you.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 21, 2020

It's all very delicately done, which may be the problem. Khaou is so intent on not being obvious about anything he wants to say that the dilemmas and dissatisfactions of the immigrant experience get lost among the subtleties.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 19, 2020

A graceful and poignant take on the immigrant experience.

| Nov 14, 2020

"Monsoon" is a lyrical, ambiguous reverie, maddening at times and beautifully resonant at others; it's quietly disorienting, but deeply felt.

| Nov 13, 2020

"Monsoon" is a quiet, solitary affair designed to communicate how isolating it can be to travel alone in a big city, especially one you have a fragmentary relationship to.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 13, 2020

A delicate, observant, and rather too quiescent drama of coming home to a strange land, "Monsoon" is an interesting change of pace for star Henry Golding and another musing on diaspora by the Cambodia-born British filmmaker Hong Khaou.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 12, 2020

"Monsoon" finally tips over the line that separates minimalism from a not-fully-developed movie.

| Nov 12, 2020

Khaou's impressionistic style surprises you, as does the depth of the performances from Golding and Sawyers.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 11, 2020

Director/screenwriter Khaou evinces a keen sense of geography here, first in a bustling Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City... and then in the more provincial and less dynamic Hanoi.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2020

Khaou succeeds in bringing the quiet - and chaos - of Vietnam to life throughout his film, and even if the dramatic thrust of "Monsoon" at times gets lost in translation as the movie ambles along, the final frames... are sweetly dazzling.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 10, 2020

You take in its atmosphere...I found it very effective, if you give it time and succumb to its rhythms...

| Oct 8, 2020

A thoughtful, deeply felt movie of great sweetness, unfolding at an unhurried pace.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2020

Most film-makers would crank the themes loud. But Khaou is never less than measured in his study of place and displacement, careful as a gymnast on a beam.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2020

In under 90 minutes, this fleeting character study leaves a lasting, optimistic impression of love and friendship.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2020

Beautifully shot and subtly delivered, Monsoon offers a poignant picture of the emigrant experience as well as Vietnam's post-war hangover, while cementing Henry Golding's position as a leading man to watch.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 21, 2020

Monsoon feels like a precisely considered expression of the untethered experience of migration.

| Jul 20, 2019

Not everything in Monsoon is quite as successful as those moments on the train. But overall, this is a fascinating and thoughtful follow-up to Khaou's well-received debut feature, the 2014 Sundance premiere Lilting with Ben Whishaw and Cheng Pei-pei.

| Jul 9, 2019

A graceful and truthfully irresolute investigation into the strange, often poignantly unreciprocated relationship that many first- and second-generation emigrants have with the far-off foreign country of the past.

| Jul 2, 2019