From the first shot, a long bird’s-eye view slowly pulling away from an intersection buzzing with scooters in Ho Chi Minh City, it’s clear that Hong Khaou’s Monsoon is willing to take its time to allow its story to breathe.

Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) stars as Kit, who returns to Vietnam where he was born. Thirty years prior, his parents took him and his brother in the middle of the night and fled the country by boat and resettled in England. His parents burned all their photographs and personal belongings to erase that part of their lives and begin anew. Now an adult, Kit has returns to a vibrant city that is barely recognizable to him as he searches for a fitting place to scatter his parents’ ashes.

Having recently quit his job as a software engineer, Kit is on a soul-searching trek, a premature midlife crisis, if you will. While there is the ritual aspect to his trip regarding the perfect spot for spreading the ashes, he also views this as an extended vacation. Which, to a single gay man in his 30s, means exploring what the gay scene has to offer. Not long after arriving, Kit uses an app to arrange a date with an American, Lewis (Southside with You’s Parker Sawyers). What is at first meant to be a casual encounter develops into a promising romance.

Golding gives an understated performance of a man who is going through a numbing period; he is both grounded and directionless at the same time. His performance really shines here. Again, subtlety abounds, and Golding plays so many quiet scenes of a man roaming alone that his body language does much of the talking.

However, the best performance is by David Tran, as Kit’s second-cousin Lee, in a supporting role. (Tran is a seasoned actor of Vietnamese film and television.) It’s as if Khaou directed him to wear all the film’s themes of sorrow, mourning, and misfortune, and he does just that. It’s a film review cliché to say, but every time he was off screen, I kept hoping he would be back.

The plot is simple, so going into any more detail would ruin its subtle pleasures. As mentioned before, it’s a slow film, and it’s especially recommended if you are in the mood for a travelogue during this time when traveling isn’t so easy. There are just so many subtle choices throughout and a real confidence in its visual storytelling.