Taste

Nigerian footballer Bassley is signed to a team in Ho Chi Minh City, and sends money back home for his son. But when Bassley is injured, his contract is terminated and he loses his only source of income. Disillusioned and broke, he moves into a collective with four middle-aged Vietnamese women. Together, they work towards establishing their own personal utopia, and share everything.

Taste won the Special Jury Award at the Berlinale earlier this year, and there are certain likenesses to international heavy hitters such as Tsai Ming-liang or Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A significant amount of the story plays out inside a basement room in which the five stranded individuals co-exist, and the hypnotic atmosphere is relayed mise-en-scéne; through set design, light, sound, and compositions worthy of a high-end art installation. This is a film which it’s difficult to stick a label on, but even more difficult to resist.

Lasse Skagen

Director

Bao Le (b. 1990) is a self-taught Vietnamese director who had debuted with the short film Coal in (2013). He wrote and directed the short films Müi (2014) and Unconsoled (2019), before he had his international breakthrough with Taste in 2021.

This film is part of