Waking up in HANOI

The pleasure of a languid, early film scene set to diegetic pop music is hard to match, in my book. The Vietnamese film THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN features three such sequences, repeated in the same bedroom at morning to different songs.

In this scene, LOU REED's 1970's single CONEY ISLAND BABY sets the tone for filmmaker TRAN ANH HUNG's carefully orchestrated wake up scene.