When Phuong My Nguyen first landed in Southern California, she was hit by the sun’s rays. The Vietnamese-French director has signed on to direct an animated film adaptation of the animated film In wavesAJ Dungo’s successful 2019 graphic memoir, traveled across the Atlantic to meet its subject—and immerse himself in his world. “It’s strange because in France we don’t have that kind of lighting all the time – now it’s spring, but we still have gray skies,” she says. “a light [in Los Angeles] “It was amazing.”
You can feel this direct inspiration everywhere In wavesNguyen’s first feature film, from a screenplay by Fanny Bordino and Samuel Doe. Expanding on the visual style of the original book, the film draws heavily from nature to tell the bittersweet love story between teens AJ and Kristin, whose bond is strengthened by a shared love of surfing.
Water has its own character here, in its adventure, natural beauty, and stormy volatility. In fact, the waterscape changes as Christine fights terminal cancer. “For AJ, the way to overcome loss is to be in the water — it’s a beautiful metaphor for life and humility in the face of nature and also in this world,” Nguyen says.
When she first met Dungo, Nguyen was nervous about how he would react to her distinctive, strange visual take on the surroundings. But the writer was immediately taken by her vision. “They bring a whole new dimension to this, and they are all much better artists than me,” Dungo says of Nguyen and her team. “The amount of work and love they poured into it is more than I could have ever imagined.”
The film also removes much of the memoir’s narrative, which often reads like a tone poem, and adds a lot of dialogue. Christine, for example, is just a memory in Dongo’s book and contains only one line. Here she speaks regularly, with Dongo providing anecdotes about her to help provide authentic characterization.
“They were digging into my experience, my family life, my friends, and asking me: ‘What was Christine like?’ “They wanted more background,” Dongo says. “It was interesting to see your history reflected back at you through someone else’s lens, but still capture the deep emotions, pain and joy the way they did.” When she came to California he gave her Dongo In waves During the tour, Nguyen remembers noticing how far Christine Hospital was from the beach. “It was interesting in a symbolic way because she was so drawn to the ocean and waves — that was her passion, and she was so geographically removed from that,” Nguyen says. “It gave me a lot of ideas for theater.”
Alternately natural and dream-like, In waves It will open Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival – the first animated film in history to do so. “We feel like we’re the ugly duckling in the film industry — in the last maybe 10 years, there haven’t been a lot of anthology animated films,” Nguyen says. “So, I think being the inaugural film is a good thing for the animation industry. We are very happy and impressed.”
