An overwhelming success at Sundance earlier this year, this debut feature
from Tony Bui is a tender and hopeful look at a Saigon in transition which
weaves past, present and future together in the stories of three Vietnamese
and one American.
Kien An (Nguyen Ngoc Hiep) is employed to pick Lotuses to sell in Saigon.
Her singing evokes memories of a happier past for her disfigured and dying
master who asks her to transcribe poems in his seclusion. Hai (Don Duong) is
a cyclo driver who falls for an uppity prostitute (Zoi Bui) while ferrying
her home. Woody (Nguyen Huu Duoc) is a kid who peddles gum, cigarettes and
lighters but is forced to wander the streets after losing his case of wares
while talking to an American (Harvey Keitel), there looking for a daughter
left behind in the war and generally trying to make peace with the past.
The westernisation - or rather globalisation - of Saigon and Vietnam is
immediately apparent in the film with the appearance of swanky hotels, neon
advertising and popular plastic lotus flowers. Bui's characters reluctantly
view this tide of commercialisation as an inevitability and, within that
knowledge, struggle to find their roots and some sort of dignity to carry
them into the future. They are aided by some lyrical cinematography and a
resonantly delicate score.
While the film's popularity at Sundance is understandable, the characters
are often sanctified, their stories simplistic and the plot occasionally
meanders. But Bui's elegiac telling of these tales is as seductive as the
hope which he invests in these people.
Reviewed by Iain Tibbles
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