by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
In post-war Saigon, a young translator and an older widow find unexpected solace in each other in Leon Le’s gentle and restrained sophomore feature Ky Nam Inn.
Khang, assigned to translate Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, arrives in Saigon hoping to escape the shadow of his politically connected family. In his modest apartment building, he meets Ky Nam, a widowed cook who keeps her distance from the other tenants while piecing together a living. When an injury sidelines her, Khang steps in to help, and their growing bond unsettles those around them. What emerges is not a sweeping romance but a quiet study of loneliness and connection in a city still marked by loss.
Written by Leon Le and Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc, Ky Nam Inn stars Lien Binh Phat as Khang, Do Thi Hai Yen as Ky Nam, Ngo Hong Ngoc, Tran Manh, Le Van Than, and Ly Kieu Hanh. The film marks Leon Le’s second feature and his first to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Ky Nam Inn opens with a quiet promise: the narrator introduces kynam, a rare resin formed only when Vietnamese trees are wounded. “Even more precious and rare than this agarwood,” the narrator says, “is a woman who shares its name.” It is an opening that makes clear the film’s metaphorical ambitions, poetic, perhaps a bit on the nose, but emotionally resonant. Like the resin, Ky Nam Inn unfolds slowly, deliberately and with a beauty that reveals itself only over time.
At its core, Ky Nam Inn is a film about longing for connection, longing for beauty, and longing for release. Its romantic tension is palpable but never melodramatic, expressed instead through glances, silences, and a shared sense of isolation. The film resists easy resolutions or overt declarations of love. Instead, it embraces ambiguity and restraint, recalling the aching romances of classic French cinema where desire is most powerful when left unfulfilled.
Art and music serve as persistent, understated motifs throughout. From scenes framed around old typewriters and faded sheet music to lavish displays of Vietnamese cuisine, the film evokes not only the characters’ yearning but also nostalgia for a vanishing world. Shot on lush 35mm, Bob Nguyen’s cinematography heightens this aura. Each frame feels carefully composed, warm and intimate yet suffused with subtle melancholy. Whether it is the glint of oil in a frying pan, the unveiling of an old typewriter or dust motes dancing in a sunbeam, the visuals mirror the film’s emotional texture: restrained, evocative and filled with unspoken yearning.
But perhaps that is the point. Ky Nam Inn is not a film that rushes toward resolution. Instead it invites viewers into a different kind of cinematic experience, one that lingers, simmers and ultimately haunts. It evokes a time and place when love was more guarded, more elusive and in some ways more profound.
A quiet, meditative romance, Ky Nam Inn succeeds not by overwhelming the senses but by awakening them slowly and gently, like the scent of agarwood rising in the night.
Grade: C+