TASTE
A FILM BY LE Bao
PRODUCTION GRANT - SPRING 2018
Bassley is a Nigerian illegal playing in the Vietnamese Football League to support his son back home. When he breaks his leg, his contract is terminated because he cannot play anymore. With nowhere to go and a heavily cast leg, Bassley finds work as a masseuse at a hair salon. Whatever money he makes, Bassley stuffs into the plaster cast. Seeking additional income, Bassley finds work as a prostitute. He finds four woman from working class backgrounds that had never previously met. Each have their own desires and intentions. They are:
Trang - a single woman working as a fishmonger in the wholesale market
Thuong - a wild woman that lives in a giant pot with a baby pig along the river canal
Hanh - lives with her sexually distant husband in an abandoned pottery kiln
Mien - a suicidal woman who lives in the slums in a household with no men
Together, they arrive at Mien’s old family home. They strip down and over the course of three days and two nights, return to a primal state: they clean together, cook together, eat together, sleep together, and have sex multiple times. Afterwards, Bassley wires all the money he has earned back to Nigeria. He tries to enter the lives of the women in more ordinary ways. They have moved on but something has changed in Bassley. Bassley walks through a forest with Thuong’s pig and spots two wild boar. Bassley stops to look, then continues walking. They enter a clearing. As the pig looks away, Bassley stabs it with the nose of a sun-dried sailfish head.