Vị is one of the most formally radical Vietnamese features of its generation, an austere sensory work that strips narrative down to bodies, food, labor, architecture, and the temporary construction of a private world. Lê Bảo’s feature debut follows Bassley, a Nigerian footballer in Vietnam whose injury has ended his ability to earn a living through the sport. He joins four middle-aged Vietnamese women in an abandoned or decaying house, where they create an intimate communal existence removed from ordinary social expectations. Goodfellas’ official sales record describes the film as an “immersive sensory journey” and documents its multilingual Vietnamese and Yoruba context. The picture’s long takes and sculptural compositions ask viewers to observe bodies without the usual explanatory dialogue or plot acceleration. Domestic controversy over censorship became part of its history, but the film’s international reception was substantial: it premiered in Berlinale’s Encounters section and won the Special Jury Award. Taste belongs to a transnational production ecology, with Vietnamese subject matter shaped through partnerships across Singapore and other countries. Its title is appropriately physical. The film is less concerned with explaining what characters think than with how existence feels through eating, touching, bathing, resting, working, and inhabiting space together.
Vibe
Synopsis
Bassley, a Nigerian footballer living in Vietnam, loses his place in the sport after a serious leg injury and struggles to make a living. He becomes connected with four middle-aged Vietnamese women who also live at the margins of economic security. Together they withdraw into an old house and create a temporary communal world governed by routines of food, bathing, sleep, physical closeness, and shared labor. Conventional outside structures—employment, family expectation, social status—recede while the group inhabits this unusual domestic space. Their refuge cannot remain permanent, and the film gradually reveals the fragility of an arrangement built against the pressures of ordinary life. Rather than drive toward a conventional resolution, Taste observes the texture of this temporary utopia and the bodies through which its pleasures and limits are experienced.
Vị is one of the most formally radical Vietnamese features of its generation, an austere sensory work that strips narrative down to bodies, food, labor, architecture, and the temporary construction of a private world. Lê Bảo’s feature debut follows Bassley, a Nigerian footballer in Vietnam whose injury has ended his ability to earn a living through the sport. He joins four middle-aged Vietnamese women in an abandoned or decaying house, where they create an intimate communal existence removed from ordinary social expectations. Goodfellas’ official sales record describes the film as an “immersive sensory journey” and documents its multilingual Vietnamese and Yoruba context. The picture’s long takes and sculptural compositions ask viewers to observe bodies without the usual explanatory dialogue or plot acceleration. Domestic controversy over censorship became part of its history, but the film’s international reception was substantial: it premiered in Berlinale’s Encounters section and won the Special Jury Award. Taste belongs to a transnational production ecology, with Vietnamese subject matter shaped through partnerships across Singapore and other countries. Its title is appropriately physical. The film is less concerned with explaining what characters think than with how existence feels through eating, touching, bathing, resting, working, and inhabiting space together.
Watch for
- Watch how food preparation, eating, bathing, and bodily rest replace conventional plot exposition; physical routines become the primary language through which relationships are understood.
- Notice the house as an architectural container for utopia, separating the group from social expectations while also making their withdrawal visibly temporary and fragile.
- Pay attention to the relationship between Bassley’s foreignness and the women’s marginality; the film avoids turning either condition into a simple metaphor for the other.
- Consider the long takes and carefully arranged bodies as part of the film’s ethics of looking, which asks viewers to remain with physical presence rather than consume rapid narrative information.
Production notes
Taste was Lê Bảo’s feature debut after earlier short-film work and was produced through a transnational network. Goodfellas’ official sales page lists a 97-minute 2021 film in Vietnamese and Yoruba, with Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga and four Vietnamese women in the principal cast, and credits E&W Films and Cinema 22 among the production companies. The film premiered in the Encounters section of the 71st Berlin International Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Award. Editor Lee Chatametikool and other regional collaborators reinforced the project’s Southeast Asian production network. The film’s highly controlled interiors and long-take visual design required performance to function through bodies and duration more than conventional dialogue. Its subsequent censorship difficulties in Vietnam became part of public discussion, but the international festival record remains clear and strong.
Trivia
- Taste premiered in Berlinale’s Encounters section in 2021 and won the Special Jury Award, giving Lê Bảo’s first feature major international recognition immediately.
- Goodfellas lists the film at 97 minutes and identifies Vietnamese and Yoruba as its languages, reflecting Bassley’s position as a Nigerian migrant living in Vietnam.
- The principal cast pairs Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga with four Vietnamese women, and the film’s communal structure deliberately avoids a conventional star hierarchy.
- Thai editor Lee Chatametikool, associated with major Southeast Asian art cinema, is credited on the project, illustrating the film’s regional collaborative network.
- The film’s domestic censorship history became widely discussed, but its canonical value here rests on the completed work and documented festival reception rather than speculation about regulatory motives.
Legacy
Taste is a crucial film for understanding how far Vietnamese cinema had expanded beyond national production boundaries by the early 2020s. Its director is Vietnamese, its social world is rooted in Vietnam, and much of its cast is Vietnamese, yet its financing, post-production, festival life, and aesthetic conversation are transnational. That structure is increasingly normal for ambitious art cinema, and Vị makes it impossible to define national film solely through domestic studio systems. Formally, the film also pushes against the narrative accessibility of most titles in the Top 100. Its long takes, sparse dialogue, nudity, and concentration on physical routine demand a different mode of attention. The Berlinale Special Jury Award confirms that this rigor was recognized internationally, while domestic controversy demonstrates the different institutional environments a single film can encounter. It does not represent the mainstream, and it should not be forced to. Its legacy lies in proving that Vietnamese filmmakers can participate in the most formally adventurous currents of contemporary world cinema while constructing images and social spaces that remain rooted in the country’s own urban margins.
Find This Film
Search “Vị” or “Taste” with Lê Bảo. Goodfellas’ official film page provides stable credits, languages, runtime, synopsis, production companies, and the Berlinale 2021 Encounters Special Jury Award.