Phan Dang Di scripted last year’s [Adrift], and he’s now turned director to continue his daringly frank exploration of sexual desires and blockages ? a topic rarely broached in earlier Vietnamese movies. The six-year-old Bi lives with his parents, an aunt and a servant in an old part of Hanoi and likes to play in a nearby ice-making plant. Home life changes gear when Bi’s bedridden grandfather returns from overseas, just as Bi’s father starts spending more and more time out visiting a favourite ‘masseuse’. Meanwhile Bi’s aunt, a spinsterish teacher, develops an agonising crush on a teenage boy. Phan observes the resulting stresses and strains with a limpid eye, using strands of imagery to link disparate events without imposing any overarching narrative. Bi obviously understands little of what happens either at home or in the ice plant, but he has as much need for companionship as any of the adults; using the child as a focus allows Phan to explore the grown-up sexual issues in an ‘innocent’ way which impressively extends the range of Vietnam’s new cinema (Tony Rayns)