French-Vietnamese filmmaker and actor Stéphane Ly-Cuong’s directorial debut feature, In the Nguyen Kitchen (OV: Dans le Cuisine de Nguyen), is a musical-comedy about an aspiring French-Vietnamese actress who has dreams of performing on Broadway. We speak to the filmmaker about his film.
So you have a lot of experience in directing musical theatre, with Yvonne being based on Cabaret Jaune Citron. As it is your debut film, what were the key elements that you wanted to emphasise?
I think the starting point was to tell a story about searching for your identity, especially when you were born in France to immigrant parents. I wanted to tell a story of a character who tries to find her balance between her two cultures, just like me. When I was growing up, I had to find balance and peace between my two cultures and very quickly in the writing process, I realised that I wanted to write a story through a mother-daughter relationship – maybe because I have a mother with a strong family and five big sisters. In addition, food was very quickly a central element because in our cultures, it’s a way of expressing feelings and sharing moments.
So you mentioned before that the heart of the film is self-identity, which is a common theme with a lot of Asian-led narratives, with younger generations being more westernised than their parents. What does your film bring to the discussion?
What I wanted to bring up is how we communicate, both effectively and ineffectively, as well as how we need to try to understand each other and the issues faced by each generation. When you are born in a country that is different from your parents’, and you want to blend in, you tend to forget your roots. Sometimes you might get angry towards your parents and their culture, and you tend to blame them for everything that seems bad to you.
I just wanted to bring to the discussion a path to try to think about how to be peaceful with yourself and how to embrace all aspects of your identity. You’re not just French-Vietnamese – what you used to consider to be a problem is not a problem, and it’s something that makes you richer.
The film’s musical numbers are very diverse, and they complement the use of Vietnamese music, especially the song that Yvonne sings in her third audition. How do you balance its use between Yvonne’s dreams and her heritage?
I wanted to use specific genres, depending on the characters. Yvonne is really inspired by Broadway-style music – old-school musicals, more jazzy and things like that. But her mom listens to Vietnamese ballads and Vietnamese pop, and her friend Koko is more into disco and queer music in a certain way – I wanted the different genres to blend, little by little.
In the beginning, Yvonne’s music is initially Broadway style. But as she gets closer to her mom, she’s slowly integrated into this environment of Vietnamese music. Furthermore, she begins to use the language and the music not only to communicate with her mom, but to help her through the audition process. So, the music helps to blend Yvonne’s acceptance and the different sides of her identity.
As I was growing up, I enjoyed musicals, but my parents used to listen to old Vietnamese songs, so, in a way, they inspired me and they are part of my heritage.
You mentioned in an earlier interview that you have a degree of creative freedom when you write with female characters. Were there any particular parts from your perspective that you wanted to integrate into the narrative?
Even if it is focused on a female character, I put a lot of personal things in this story. The film is really personal – just like Yvonne, I think I had internalised some stereotypes, and I wanted to be a good pupil and do things like what people expect from me. I realised that I don’t have to do that, and on the contrary, I had to feel free to express my own identity, and I think that’s what I wanted to put in her character that was the most personal to me.
When I initially started to think about the film, I was in La Fémis (a film school in France) and I was developing this project and thought, “well, I’m in a big school, maybe I have to be very serious and do what people expect from someone like me – maybe an Asian film with a lot of silent scenes”.
And I thought, little by little, I understood that I have to be myself – and if I want to open my film with pink feathers, and you know, I put some disco music and long scenes with food, and why not? It’s a story of self-affirmation – just like what I’m going through, and I have to be proud of what I want to say, and I don’t have to be the way I think people expect me to.
There is a visual contrast in the film as the musical scenes are very light in tone, and then you have the kitchen scenes that are quite sombre but a lot more personal. Did you want that visual juxtaposition?
I wanted to oppose the two characters – Yvonne wants to be a musical theatre performer, so she kind of lives in her dreams. On the other hand, you have her mother, who is extremely down to earth and, you know, she works a lot and is more of a realist.
So I wanted to have different visual approaches, like the musical numbers, I wanted to have more sophisticated camera moves, lighting and colours. In the kitchen, it is more sombre – we’re doing things with our hands, we’re prepping things. It’s not like just dreamy and dancing in the streets.
It was important to me to have two different worlds, even if there’s music while cooking, but it’s lighter music, and it has more Vietnamese sounds in it. But it’s not as vibrant and brilliant as the musical numbers. It’s like trying to get into the intimacy of the mother, just like Yvonne is trying to connect to her, so it couldn’t be too much.
In the Nguyen Kitchen is very different because there are a lot of Asians in a French-language film. What can you tell me about the process in terms of finding this cast?
Well, it wasn’t very complicated because it’s a small world and most of them were already friends. Because it’s a very small world, we know each other, and most of them didn’t go through a casting process – I just offered them the role.
Many film people in France, like casting directors or producers, say no, there’s no Asian talent in France, or there are very few. No, there are many, but they don’t get, they don’t get the chance to be in the spotlight. Since I have many Asian characters in this story, I wanted to prove that [French-Asian actors] do exist and they are talented, so the casting process was not complicated at all.
My producer [Amélie Quéret] and I were lucky to meet partners that were aware that there were no films about Asian communities in France before so we were really grateful that they understood that and they wanted to support us and not saying, “maybe you should change the subject” or “keep the musical thing but have white people” or something like that, but thank God this didn’t happened and we were able to make the movie like we wanted to.
I want to ask about Clotilde, who is brilliant as Yvonne. You work together on Cabaret Jaune Citron. How was it working with her on a feature film?
We really enjoyed the process. We discussed a lot before filming because Cabaret Jaune Citron was something else – it was the same character, but it wasn’t the same story. And above all, it’s a different type of performing. In theatre and occasionally musical theatre, you might tend to project a bit more of your voice, your singing voice, your speaking voice or everything, but in film, we are closer to a character, so you cannot perform exactly like on the stage because it would be a bit too much.
That was the first discussion that we had because it was her first time on screen, so she needed to adjust her acting, but I think that she’s a talented woman and a smart woman, so it wasn’t a problem at all.
I don’t remember exactly when we did Cabaret Jeune Citron for the first time, but I think it was 2011 or something like that, and she performed the character many times over the years, as well as put a lot of her own personality into the character.
When I thought of the character in the beginning, maybe she was a bit tougher, a bit more bitchy or something like that. But Clotilde is really positive, has a good energy, and when you see her, you know that she’s a nice person. She put a lot of herself into the character, and I really like what Yvonne has become in this combination of our input.
Going back to food, there were three dishes that were in the film. You have banh cuon, spring rolls and banh chung. From a personal perspective, were there any other dishes that you wanted to include?
I think Vietnamese food is so rich, and I love so many dishes, but I chose these dishes to build the story. Banh chung is important to me because it’s something that you really need to do with many people, i.e. not on your own. The legend [behind the dish] is also a real legend, and I really like what it says because it’s like you have everything in your own hands or nearby – you don’t have to go very far to succeed. You need to embrace what you already have.
Banh cuon is included because I like banh cuon – it’s one of my favourite dishes. And you have spring rolls because they’re so popular, and you have them in any Asian restaurant in France, so I wanted to make this joke that French people only enjoy spring rolls and that they don’t see beyond that. But it was a way to show that Yvonne’s mother has internalised some stereotypes, and on her menu, and she has what French people like or what she thinks they like.
It’s the same way as when Yvonne thinks that a director thinks that if she’s Asian, she must be a geisha, and she’s more or less ready to do it. So in their own way, they open up about more lesser-known aspects of their identities, similar to how Yvonne thinks: “Okay, I’m French and Vietnamese, I want to work with Koko (Gaël Kamilindi) and sing disco music and not just a geisha song, and let’s embrace singularities or specific aspects of our personalities and not what people expect”.
What other kinds of stories are you interested in telling?
For now, I’m still exploring different stories about the Vietnamese diaspora, so I’m not leaving this field right now, but not away from the same angle. My next project is about female characters again, around a middle-aged woman returning to Vietnam for the first time in many years. So, I’m still interested in telling diasporic stories just because we don’t have any in French film. And I think it’s important to tell them and not let other people who don’t know about them tell them.
I don’t think I will make films about the Vietnamese diaspora for all my life. Maybe I want to explore Korean stories or, maybe, Vietnamese, but not from the diaspora. Perhaps someday I would like to make a film in Vietnam from a more Vietnamese perspective, but we’ll see.
So no more musicals at the moment?
Perhaps another musical that is not necessarily Asian – I mean, there will always be diversity in my films, so there will be Asian characters, but they would not be the main focus. But maybe a big-budget musical someday would be fun.
In The Nguyen Kitchen opens in participating cinemas from 29 August, including cast and crew Q&As events organised by T A P E and MilkTea.
