So much credit goes to Joshua Trigg, an ace filmmaker who has delivered one of the most affecting and engaging dramas of the year. “Satu – Year of the Rabbit” is a powerhouse drama packed to the brim with beauty, sadness, and grief, and pairs two people together, both of whom are in search of something. In the tradition of films like “Harry and Tonto,” Joshua Trigg’s film is about two wandering spirits that find a purpose in the middle of the amazing countryside of Laos. This is where “Satu” also acts as something of a travelogue akin to 1991’s “The Inland Sea,” acting as a means of conveying the richness, and vast scope of their home.
When a bomb endangers the Pha Tang temple, ‘Satu’ an orphan child laborer decides to head north through the rich and feral landscape of Laos in search of his long lost mother with his new photojournalist friend ‘Bo’.
Director Trigg allows Laos to become its own entity, even sometimes feeling like a third character. So much of that can be attributed to the excellent cinematography by James Chegwyn whose framing of this country is just dynamite. So much of how Laos is filmed often punctuates the sheer emotion of the journey that these pair experience, and the emotional turmoil they endure from the moment they meet. Although the scope is epic, Trigg’s sentiment is subtle and often sublime, with so much of the emotion conveyed more through looks and gestures, and so much less around endless dialogue.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the perfect casting of the film’s core protagonists (making their film debuts): Vanthiva Saysana as photographer Bo, and Itthiphone Sonepho as young Satu are marvelous in their respective roles as two entities on journeys that are juxtaposed but still very similar. Bo is running from something in search of a new chapter in her life, while Satu is running toward something in desperate search of some kind of purpose. Whether or not they really want to see what awaits them in the end remains the consistent question that lingers overhead.
Nevertheless, Bo and Satu find inadvertent friendship and companionship with each other, surviving through harsh conditions, and paralleling a more dire sub-plot involving an elderly woman who houses a fugitive in her house and decides to take mercy on him. Sonepho is so absolutely genuine in his role as young Satu, who’s managed to deal with his past as an orphan but desperately wants to find some justification for what led to him being left behind.
Most recently screening at Raindance 2024, “Satu – Year of the Rabbit” truly is a marvelous picture, and a gem that deserves a larger audience. Does it re-invent the wheel? No. But, I could have sat through a three hour edit of this film, and never looked back.