What a lovely film that touches the heart. It is truly an enchanting film with story lines that make you feel deeply in your soul. There were scenes that were so beautiful ... like the red flowers during summer time. The Vietnamese dress was breathtaking...in white floating within a forest of red. Take your time to welcome in a new culture and savor the beauty of its country. This movie is like a fresh air on a summer day. Highly recommended!!!
this is the way films should be done
What a superb film! Set in Vietnam, it tells three different stories (in different settings--although the stories overlap slightly) but somehow has a cohesion that works very well. I would call that cohesion by the name of "humanity." My favorite story is that of a bike taxi (cyclo) driver who befriends a jaded prostitute and treats her with common dignity. (I won't go into detail in order to save the masterful character development to your viewing.) The acting of these two characters and the way the camera catches their essences is simply amazing.
The other two stories are nearly as great. One is of a woman who begins a new job of harvesting and selling lotus flowers and how she adapts to her initially-cold co-workers and to the mysterious man who lives on an island in the middle of the waterway where they harvest the flowers. An extraordinarily beautiful scene involves the ladies at work in their small wooden boats singing together among the lotus blossoms. The other story is of an American ex-serviceman who is in Vietnam to try to contact his now-grown daughter that he never knew.
In summation, if you are looking for a hollywood thriller, this is not your film. But if you like to sit and absorb the scenes, ways, and feelings of an interesting setting and to be part of an intelligent, humane, and moving story, give this film a try. Note: Most of the conversation is in Vietnamese (and a bit of English) with English subtitles.
The city was once named Saigon; it is now called Ho Chi Minh City, and in this powerful second feature by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) it looks like a lost circle of hell.
Cyclo is a survey of a society in decay, in which conventional plotting gives way to a series of enigmatic episodes and haunting observations. There are two main characters: Cyclo (Le Van Loc) is a poor urban teenager who scratches out a living operating a bicycle taxi in the murderous city traffic; the Poet (Hong Kong star Tony Leung) is the son of an upper-class family who has depressively drifted into pimping and fencing--wartime rackets still thriving in the new Vietnam.
Images of appalling violence are played against backgrounds of banal, everyday bustle--a... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Anh Hung Tran DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The lush, super-chic ambience of Tran Anh Hung's third feature, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, presents a beckoning, irresistible vision of Vietnam. The film opens with a sexy brother and sister waking up to the sound of Lou Reed's laconic voice on the stereo. They stretch, practice tai chi, meander toward a late breakfast, and playfully flirt with each other. This morning ritual--slightly disturbing but mostly alluring--recurs as a quietly resistant motif to the disappointment that awaits each character introduced. Shot on location in an impossibly hued Hanoi (lime green and chartreuse abound), the film trails after three beautiful sisters during the month that separates the anniversaries of the deaths of their mother and father. Attempting to protect the ideal memory of their... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tran Nu Yên-Khê - Nhu Quynh Nguyen Director(s): Anh Hung Tran DVD Release Date: Released the 18 December 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"Watching it is like seeing a poem for the eyes." That's how Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert described this exquisite, Oscar-nominated, French-Vietnamese film from 1993, which begins in the 1950s and ends more than a decade later during the early years of the Vietnam war. The story is set almost entirely in a Saigon house where a 10-year-old orphan girl named Mui arrives to work as a servant. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Mui is quietly and carefully observant of everything around her, from the scent of green papaya (hence the title) to the relationship between her employers. The film takes its visual cues from Mui's observations--it's a placid, soothing film that lingers over the physical and emotional details of its setting and story.
Régis Wargnier's 1992 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film is a bit like watching paint dry, despite its exotic locale and lead performance by the legendary Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Deneuve plays a wealthy French landowner, born and raised in Indochina, from 1930 until 1955, the year of a Communist takeover. The brewing political changes bound to upset her fortune and destiny find an even more personal parallel in her relationship with an adopted daughter (Linh Dan Pham), who grows up and becomes independent. The outline of this scenario sounds pretty good, but the film is flat and unworthy of its star. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Catherine Deneuve Director(s): Régis Wargnier DVD Release Date: Released the 21 March 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A little-known aspect of America's Vietnam War debacle--life in the temporary camps set up in the States for the thousands of refugees who came here after the fall of Saigon in 1975--is the subject of this 113-minute film, released in 2001. Director-cowriter Timothy Linh Bui and his brother, writer-producer Tony Bui, have made a movie that's obviously very sympathetic to its Vietnamese characters; Green Dragon is also apparently quite realistic, and refreshingly lacking in excessive sentimentality. Much of it is in Vietnamese (with English subtitles, of course); indeed, one senses that nominal top-liners Patrick Swayze and the always-reliable Forest Whitaker are on hand more for their star power than for the importance of their roles. In the end, this is a good story that's rather... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Patrick Swayze - Forest Whitaker Director(s): Timothy Linh Bui DVD Release Date: Released the 10 September 2002 Usually ships within 24 hours
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