This film is a slow burn, lingering long on views of city streets, the countryside, and day-to-day Cambodian life. That, combined with themes of isolation, intergenerational tension, exploitation of Cambodian youth by white foreigners (who have money, for the most part), and tacit homophobia, makes it no "light watch." It seems to ask viewers for a long, careful look at each shot and each situation, occasionally rewarding them with visual quirks that would go unnoticed by one watching too passively.

For example, Songsa, the youngest of the three protagonists, is riding in the back of a tuk-tuk. His father, who is driving, asks him if he's okay. Watching the blur of the rural terrain outside, Songsa doesn't answer. Cut to a view of his father from the back seat. The man's bald head is unmoving, faceless from the back; he keeps driving and doesn't so much as glance back to check. One might easily miss Songsa's face reflected in the tiny, circular rear-view mirror beyond his father's head — a visual metaphor for the father's traditional views, perhaps, and a sign that they diminish his son.

Another of the film's strengths lies in the feeling of isolation around each of the three characters going about their separate lives, without it being crushing or total. The three "break out" in different ways, small or significant, on the colorful fringes of the city's urban nightlife — although those fringes seem to come with their own perils.

Two of the characters' Queerness goes largely unspoken, much less seen. Their families all seem traditional in structure, which puts their privacy at a premium.

All these tensions have a payoff by the end, when the three finally come together by chance after all their ordeals. None of their dialogue is audible, but as they stand on their own, far from the camera in a wide-angle shot of a rural landscape, the meaning of the film's title is revealed, as a bond between them apparently coalesces. Both in this scene and in general, the film withholds much, relying on scenery and minute body language during its long moments of silence.