The Scent of Green Papaya
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Movie Reviews of The Scent of Green Papaya
Movie Review: SOMETIMES GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a lovely French-Vietnamese film that tells the story of Mui (Man San Lu), a ten year old, illiterate girl with a sweet disposition who becomes a servant in a traditional upper middle class, Saigon household in 1951 Vietnam. Separated from her mother at such a young age, Mui takes the world in stride, enjoying and savoring all that is around her. Even the simple scent of green papaya charms her. She is definitely someone who looks at her glass as being half-full rather than half-empty.
She comes to the household like a breath of fresh air. The household consists of a mother, a father, three sons, and the grandmother, the father's mother. The mother (Thi Loc Truong) seems to be a somewhat unhappy woman. Having lost her only daughter, a child that would have been Mui's age had she lived, the sight of Mui makes her happy. She otherwise has little about which to be happy. The father (Ngoc Trung Tran), a seemingly uncommunicative man, spends his time playing melancholic music. He occasionally leaves the household for months at a time, taking with him the family's money and small valuables in order to carouse and have a good time, leaving the mother to fend for the family as best that she can. The grandmother is given to berating her, blaming her for the father's absences.
There are three sons in the household, two young ones who play pranks and torment others, as well as a much older son, whose best friend, Khuyen (Hoa Hoi Vuong), occasionally comes to dinner. It is there that he first catches Mui's eye, and she is smitten, developing a little crush on him. Ten years later, with the family on the skids, their wealth having dissipated, the father and mother-in-law now dead, the oldest son married to a shrew, a now twenty year old Mui (Tran Nu Yen Khe), who is quite lovely to look at, can no longer remain in the household, as they can no longer afford to keep her. She is to go and work in the household of the wealthy Khuyen. The mother, heartbroken at Mui's leaving, gives her valuable gifts that she would have given her own daughter, had she but lived.
When Mui goes to Khuyen's westernized household, the influence of the French being obvious, Khuyen is engaged to a very cosmopolitan and worldly woman who makes demands upon Khuyen that upset the harmony of his life. Khuyen is an artist, as he is a composer and pianist. Mui quietly walks around the fringes of his life, bringing peace, harmony, and beauty along with her. Comparisons to Khuyen's fiance are inescapable. Mui is now a beautiful young woman who still delights in the simplest things around her. One day she decides to use the valuable gifts that her former employer gave her. The artist in Khuyen cannot help but notice. It is then that Mui's life is transformed and becomes the stuff of fairytales.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this is simply a beautiful film. With a minimum of dialogue, the director, Tran Anh Hung, who also wrote the screenplay, manages to convey much, exacting exquisite performances from the entire cast. It is Mui, however, who captures the heart of the viewer. Mui is a pure delight, patient, joyful, and loving. It is the role of Mui that is central to the film, and both actresses succeed brilliantly in anchoring the film through their respective portrayals. Moreover, although most of the film takes place in the two households in which Mui works, the film does not cease to fascinate. It is hard to believe that this film was shot on a sound stage in Paris, as the sets look so authentic. This is not a film for everyone, however, as the scenes are slow and deliberate and contain little dialogue. For those for whom beauty is of the essence, their patience will be amply rewarded.
Movie Review: An Elegy to the Organic and Pastoral
Summary: 5 Stars
Tran Anh Hung's the Scent of Green Papaya is a masterpiece for the ages. It is effectively two stories - the story of a young and then older Mui. Tran's movie, it can be argued - here as well as in "The Vertical Ray of the Sun" and less in "Cyclo" that he follows the predictable elements of the "pastoral" and deals head on with the issue of country/city tensions. Tran's country/city tension is simple but not simplistic - indeed it can be argued that it is complex. The visuals of nature and tradition occur within the city and are surrounded by urban decay.
With regards to the first section of the movie, when Mui is still a child, Tran develops her connection to nature with almost painting like images of nature as Mui fuses with the outside space of the house - when she is around the space collapses into itself both visually and through sound. I find myself nostalgic about the opening scene with Mui's first moments in her new abode. Right of the bat (no pun intended), the twittering of crickets overpowers most other auditory stimuli. There was a scene between Mui's new patron and husband playing an instrument, the twittering of crickets is heard over the music. Mui is almost always enclosed and bound by nature. When Mui is present, we see small animals and plants. Not to belabor the point, Mui's bed is underneath a window that looks out onto the garden of tropical bushes and a palm-like plant - again re-enforcing Mui's connection to nature. My sense is Tran's reference to nature is an elegy to things past - to a pre-modern Vietnam before the entry of the French and Americans. Consider this, when Mui is in the camera's sights in an enclosed space we always find plants or animals. Conversely, when Mui is not present, the scene is devoid of the same. In short, Mui's world is nature.
With regards to the second section, Múi becomes once again the elegy to pre-modernity - we see her tempted by modern culture when her former employers can no longer afford her as give her a chance at a better situation through the transfer to Khuyen's house. Of the less subtle juxtapositions is Mui vis-à-vis Khuyen's westernized fiancée. The fiancée begins to leave parts of her western "non-organic" beauty behind - her high heels and lipstick. The fiancée's beauty is artificial and problematizes the natural beauty - that defines this pastoral project. This artificial beauty exemplifies, actually counters, the artificial beauty which is Tran's "organic" project. Múi encounters these items in here heretofore organic space, she is spellbound and understandably cautious. With regards to the high heels and the lipstick - both metaphors for the unwanted unnatural - Mui wants to try on the high heels however never really completes its. With regards to the lipstick - she actually takes the plunge only later on to wipe it off. Múi fuses the two worlds when she dons the traditional Au Dai juxtaposed with the non-organic lipstick. Tran uses the lipstick to show the fusion (more like conquest) of modernity and urbanity forces onto nature and tradition. One could argue that playing on this juxtaposition is a metaphor for the different spaces one of modern Viet Nam and the other of Tran's more organic and pastoral vision of a pre-war/pre-modern Viet Nam as Múi wipes the lipstick off in shame.
I cannot overemphasize the beauty and depth of this movie. If you have not seen the movie - see it. If you have not bought the movie - buy it.
Miguel Llora
Movie Review: Smells delicious.
Summary: 5 Stars
Expatriate Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, who was 29 years old in 1993 when he made *The Scent of Green Papaya*, joined a select pantheon that includes the likes of Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard (just to name a couple off the top of my head). Meaning, he was a "wunderkind" who changed cinema. ("Was"? He's still doing it.) Even though comparing *Green Papaya* to *Citizen Kane* is like comparing papayas to oranges, the fact remains that Hung's debut had a similarly galvanizing effect on cinema that *Kane* did. This movie, quite simply, put Vietnam on the cinematic map. Set during the pre-war 1950's, it chronicles the experiences of a young servant-girl named Mui who works and lives in a well-to-do, somewhat Westernized household. Halfway through, it jumps forward 10 years: having been forced out of her job by financial constraints, Mui is sent by her employers to a wealthy pianist who's a friend of the family. Naturally, she falls in love with the handsome pianist. And there's your story. Sorry for the spoilers, but the simplicity of the virtually nonexistent "plot" is the least thing you should concern yourself with. A review below mine groused about wanting a "story in the mix", and complained that the movie's nothing more than a series of beautiful pictures. . . . First of all, in today's all-too-ugly cinema, I think it's wrongheaded to dismiss a movie that's beautifully made -- as if beautifully-made movies are an everyday occurence. Secondly, there's story enough in this mix, although those viewers too unimaginative to see beyond the prison-walls of standard, formulaic, stupid "Hollywood" narrative conventions will doubtless not even find it, let alone appreciate it. The director's basic theme is the interconnectedness of things: with superb discrimination, Hung demonstrates how the infintesimal illuminates the infinite. His audacious ambition seems to be to tell a story of Life Itself. The interplay between the drama of the characters' lives and the drama of Nature which surrounds them enriches both stories. Most striking is the almost elliptical manner in which Hung focuses so intently on something like a drop of milk-sap falling on a leaf, while putting no more weight -- in fact, probably less -- on the major incidents of the characters lives. It's the appeal of a more quietist philosophy than ours to put things in their proper perspective. Doubtless this appeal will on deaf ears here in the West; the movie won't find many champions in a distracted USA, for instance. But that doesn't make it any less of a masterpiece. -- A quick rejoinder to the several reviewers who griped that this wasn't the "real" Vietnam. Well, that's correct in one sense: the movie was shot in France on sound-stages. Instead of marveling at the director's brilliance in evoking a deeply involving, realistic world from scratch, they choose to take issue with his "imagination", essentially saying that his cinematic vision is nothing more than wishful thinking. The obvious answer to this is to say that Donald Trump's America isn't my America, a homeless man's America isn't my America, etc. And Tran Anh Hung's impressionistic Vietnam isn't your Vietnam, and a cyclo-driver's Vietnam isn't yours, either. The movie is a work of imagination. It is not a documentary about the country. Does that clear things up for you? (Sheesh!)Movie Review: A Gentle Rain
Summary: 5 Stars
This lovely and subtle film washes over you like a gentle tropical rain. The dialog is sparse and the beauty dense in director Anh Hung Tran's portrait of a young servant girl in 1951 Saigon and those she serves. There is an intimacy to this film seldom if ever seen on screen. The simple beauty of nature and its effect on living can actually be felt by the viewer. We can hear the birds chirping and the sound of crickets all through this film just as though we are there.
Man San Lu portrays young Mui as she first comes to serve this family. She learns to cook and do her other tasks from an older servant who has been with this family for many years. You can almost smell the dishes as Mui learns the craft, the film itself a delicious study in our senses.
Young and pretty Mui finds beauty in the world around her and Tran's camera captures both her delight and the joy of nature itself. Mui watches milky nectar drip onto leaves of small trees and we see through her eyes what we sometimes take for granted.
This beautiful photography is used to capture more than just nature though. Mui's Mistress (Thi Loc Troung) has lost a daughter in the past who would now be Mui's age. When her husband runs away from his family and takes the money she has saved from her small business in Saigon selling fabric, more of the past is revealed. This is not the first time he has run off with the money and a woman. It is heartbreaking when we overhear her mother blaming her for what he has done.
Mui has come to care for the Mistress and she in turn has begun to look upon Mui as the daughter she lost, hoping her oldest son will grow up and take her for his wife. But it is not to be as times become even harder and the Mistress has to release Mui in a scene filled with kindness and sadness. The film has affected us in such a way that this moment takes on a true intimacy because we know the sweetness of Mui and the dignity of her Mistress who can no longer hide her heart.
Tran moves forward in time 10 years and beautiful Tran Nu Yen-Khe is Mui, now serving a young and upper class French conservatory student. He is more modern and successful and contrasts the old and new of a changing Saigon. His rich girlfriend is perfect for his life but as we have watched the joy and sweetness of Mui we understand completely why he drops her and breaks tradition by taking Mui instead. It will lead to happiness and one more thought about nature, both floral and human.
This gentle film has a beauty you can almost touch and you will find yourself thinking about it for some time afterward. This truly great director has taken a simple story with little dialog and created an emotionally rich film like no other. It is not your typical linear story, but film as art, and one that anyone who loves the cinematic aspects of film will relish in. A true masterpiece.
Movie Review: A Fragrance Not Soon To Be Forgotten
Summary: 5 Stars
Note: Vietnamese with English subtitles.
I would never have thought that a movie so simplistic, with so little dialogue could turn into such an exquiste viewing experience. In what is unquestionably one of the most hauntingly beautiful visual cinematic experiences ever 'The Scent of Green Papayas' is a tale of a little ten year old Vietnamese girl named Mui (Man San Lu) who arrives at the home of a moderately well-off family to begin her new duties as a house servant. Her life of servitude finally pays off some ten years later when her quiet beauty and gentle patient ways are recognized by the young master of the house and makes her his wife and expectant mother of his first child.
Nothing complicated here, nor is there anything that one could consider incisive, intelligent dialogue or a highly original storyline. It's the cinematography that initially pulls the viewer into the beautiful Vietnamese world of '51 and that initial interest is soon enhanced by the presence of the sweet and demure young Man San Lu who captures your heart with her innocent, obedient demeanor.
Surprisingly a good two-thirds of the movie deals with Mui in the early years of her household duties. It's only in the final third of the film that Mui appears as an exotically beautiful twenty year old now played by Tran Nu Yen-Khe. Though fully grown, she still retains all of the endearing qualities she had as a child. Quiet, introspective, patient, unassuming, hard working and too attractive to ignore.
If you're in the mood for a visually beautiful film with an even more captivating lead actress (Tran) this is your film. Highly recommended!