Iris Truong on Asian Cinema, Desire, And Sweaty Summer Movies
we're In The Mood for longing
My guest today is writer Iris Truong who pens a phenomenal Substack by the same name. I’ve invited her to talk to us about her impeccable taste in Asian media and culture. She writes about film, books, and curates city guides. Everyone follow her, please!! I’m in BOLD, Iris is regular…
IRIS: Hi everyone! Thank you Lina for having me :) Usually I ramble to unwilling friends and family, but finally someone asks me about these topics. In all seriousness, it’s so nice to be on the Substack of someone I’ve admired for so long!
Like she said, I write about Asian culture and post visuals on my little Notes. I also recently experimented with interactive posts that you can read during journaling/before bed. But today I’m here to yap!
LINA: I’m absolutely obsessed with your taste in media. How would you describe your aesthetic?
IRIS: I draw a lot of inspiration from 80s and 90s Asian media. I am very interested in cultural fusion, like a Vietnamese movie scene made by a French director, with African-American blues music over it. Or a real life example: recently I researched the Showa-era in Japan, which was post-WWI when the country was rapidly urbanizing, so manga illustrations reflected both Japanese traditions and Western influences. Those are the stuff that I love.
LINA: Did you have a formative experience with a film that set you on a course to discover more? Tell us about it.
IRIS: Oh my god this is like a Top 4 Letterboxd interview but 1000% harder! I don’t think I could pick a film! But I’ll say this—after taking a film class and analyzing Sunset Boulevard, I realized for the first time how much meaning could be packed into a film. That experience totally changed the way I saw movies, both ones I had already watched and everything I’ve seen ever since.
LINA: What would you say are some defining features of how desire is portrayed in East Asian cinema? Why does it hit different? I know this is a huge category to capture, but I’m interested in any themes you see.
IRIS: Definitely subtlety and discretion. I recently watched a YouTube video about why certain Chinese poems are untranslatable to English (trust me this story will make sense). The gist is: Chinese can often omit pronouns, which allows poems to suggest people without explicitly naming them. That layer of subtlety—hinting rather than pointing—is often lost in translation.
I thought this was a fitting metaphor for portrayals of desire in Eastern vs Western movies. Some of the most famous K-dramas only have kiss scenes! Instead, desire is portrayed indirectly, like acts of service or praises.
LINA: American and European depictions of desire so often draw on puritanism to create tension around desire. Are East Asian directors working outside of this tradition, and if so what effect does it have on the atmosphere of these films?
IRIS: I’ve noticed that desire in Asian movies feels more suspended. Directors like Wong Kar-wai, Hirokazu Kore-eda, or Lee Chang-dong create emotional spaces where desire is filtered through memory, longing, and social codes rather than overt sexual tension. Because of that, love stories are often bittersweet, whether because of characters’ own personalities or social obligations/judgement.
LINA: Some of my favorite queer films are in this category, for example THE HANDMAIDEN which comes from Korea (and is an adaptation of a novel set in England). Arguably it’s one of the few cases where the film is about a hundred times better than the book. Is there a throughline of how queerness is depicted on film?
IRIS: I guess I could take the easy route and say that directors play with society’s conservative attitudes towards queerness to amplify its intimacy. Queer love stories in Asian cinema (at least prior to the 2010s) are shrouded in social taboo. Sometimes, the majority of the movie is the characters fighting against the weight of societal expectation instead of navigating their own feelings. Their love has to be concealed in silence, so it can be extremely intimate, even more than heterosexual relationships.
LINA: Summer is such a good time for sexy movies. What would you say is a defining film for summer?
IRIS: My designated summer movie is always Chungking Express. It’s sweaty and sexy and slightly melancholic, with an AMAZING SOUNDTRACK. I said this once and I will say this again: You will never hear “California Dreamin’” the same way again.
LINA: I love Chungking Express and was so glad to have seen it before my trip to Hong Kong earlier this year. We rode the escalators all the way to the top of the hill singing “California Dreamin’” the whole way.
For beginners to East Asian cinema, what are some defining films to see?
IRIS: It’s wonderful that you asked, because I am currently writing an essay on this! I’m gonna give you a sneak peek. You should watch In the Mood for Love (classic and a bit cliché I know, but it’s classic for a reason :D) to understand the discreet way Asian cinema depicts desire. It’s the perfect mix of relationship misunderstandings and societal expectations weighing on a couple. If people have already watched that, then I (and you too I suppose :D) recommend The Handmaiden!
LINA: What about deeper cuts?
IRIS: Anything by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, but my personal pick is Millennium Mambo. I watched it 2 years ago on a humid summer night when my AC broke down and I had to rely on a fan, and it was a religious experience. The movie was hypnotic, touching, hopeful, charming — all the good adjectives I can pull out. It definitely is harder to follow than the ones I mentioned before though, very hazy both in visuals and plot.
LINA: I think of you as writing primarily about cinema, but your most popular post is actually about literature. Do you have an all-time favorite book? What have you been reading lately?
IRIS: I know! I didn’t expect my so-called “beginner’s guide to Asian literature” to be so big. I realized after that that people are really eager to get into Asian authors, but it’s tough to cut through all the noise and find something genuinely good. I’m gonna sound like a pretentious nightmare saying this, but my all-time favorite book is a Vietnamese novel written entirely in poetry called The Song of Kiều. We actually studied it in school—over four years, because it’s that hard. But honestly, it still has the most beautiful language I’ve ever read.
Right now, I’m actually reading Anna Wintour’s biography! I got inspired after she stepped down, and so far, it’s insanely interesting.
LINA: I love how you curate visuals on substack notes. What inspires you and how do you find these pictures?
IRIS: Thank you! Coming from you I am so flattered. I know there are a million other apps out there that are better for inspiration, but I still use Pinterest. I have been using the app for so long that my feed basically reads my mind. What I usually do is scroll for a little bit, find an interesting visual, then Google Image search it (because Pinterest is horrible with credits).
LINA: Care to share some images you’ve been loving lately?
IRIS: I recently posted these pictures, and found myself still thinking about them. It’s a series of illustrations by a Japanese artist called Kazuo Kamikura. Tears turn into petals; how poetic!
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always in the mood for longing (♡´౪`♡)
AAAHH SO eXCITeD