by Nathaniel R
I was hoping to catch at least one feature in Venice that would be selected by its home country as an Academy Award submission and I did! Kavich Neang's debut feature (after several shorts) White Building will represent Cambodia for the next Oscar race. I'm already hoping it makes the finals both because the Academy is far too stingy with Asian cinema and because it's very good.
White Building impresses immediately with an aerial shot over a tenement building that looked like a cross between a Rauschenberg and a Pollock, a messy collage of patchwork color and intricate city grime and electrical wiring of the world we’re about to descend into. The building is not white given years of decay but surely once was. We initially have fun with a trio of young men including Samnang (Piseth Chhun) as they share a motorbike around the city, trying to pick up girls...
They dream of becoming famous hiphop dancers. Unfortunately this trio breaks up just as soon as you've had time to fall in love with them.
The life that Samnang knew is coming to an abrupt end. It's not just the rug (his best friend moving to France) but his whole home that's being pulled out from under him. The government wants the white building's apartment owners (including his parents) to sell their inner city homes at a ridiculously low price point per square feet. Many of the films at the 78th Venice International Film Festival have dealt with the anxiety provoking socioeconomic realities for the 99% but this was my favorite take on that theme. White Building presents a complex ecosystem of humanity including young adults (like Samnang and his headstrong sister) who are more resilient, adaptable, and modern than their parents, an argumentative coop board who can’t agree on anything, and even a medical drama that also feels too real.
Though it’s steeped in sobering reality, White Building also knows when to switch things up with an unsettling dream sequence or a colorful daydream just this side of life as Samnang knows it. The film slows down as it goes rather than speeds up, the inverse of so many films, which is a perfect choice given this particular vanishing world. The film ends with a profile silhouette of the young man that is not without hope but feels ineffably sad nonetheless. A fine debut for a young filmmaker! B+