The second film from Khyentse Norbu (The Cup), and the first film ever to be shot in beautiful Bhutan (no irony), tells of a lowly government official who, posted in a remote mountain village, wants desperately to be elsewhere: "There's nothing here, no movies, no restaurants, and most of all, no cool girls." A narrow window of opportunity opens on his dream of going to America, and he moves to squeeze through it with his spotless white athletic shoes, his blue suitcase, and his trusty boombox and tapes ("Gotta go, gotta get out, gotta get outta here!"), but he misses the one-a-day bus and is stranded on the road in the company of a shrivelled old apple peddler and a Buddhist monk. The latter, to pass the time, spins a tale-within-the-tale about another man who lived in a "dreamland," a tale of marital infidelity, illegitimate pregnancy, and homicidal poison, a sort of Far Eastern Postman Always Rings Twice. The parallels of this steamy tale to the outer tale -- a charming low-pressure comedy -- are not always very apparent, yet the protagonist learns his lesson anyway, helped along by the arrival of another fellow traveller, a girl, if not in the least a cool one. His pulse slows; he gets into the rhythm of the journey itself; he settles into the present. The viewer's pulse slows, too, though he would be justified in feeling that the lesson of the movie could have been taught just as well without the monk's tale, or at any rate without the arty affectations with which the director adorns it. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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