The Vertical Ray of Sun is beautiful, languorous, passive it plays like background music for itself. Filmed in a Hanoi that looks more like an Asian love hotel than a city, it s a lush, sensuous work the film equivalent of those old Mantovani albums with names like Music for Lovers Only. It tells the stories of three sisters, two married, one single, and although it contains adulteries in the present, rumors of adultery in the past, one or perhaps two pregnancies and a hint of incestuous feelings, it would be fair to say that hardly anything happens.
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Let me describe one shot. In the left foreground, a woman reclines on a bed. In the right background, a man looks out the window. It is raining. He is smoking. She lights a cigarette. For a time nothing happens except for the pleasure they take in silent companionship and smoking together. This time, passing in this intimacy without words, is a moment that says so much about their comfort in each other s company th