Top 20 Vietnamese Films (Part II)

Top 20 Vietnamese Films (Part I)

As promised, here’s the second part of my list:

10. Dung Dot/ Don’t Burn (2009)

Director: Dang Nhat Minh

During the Vietnam War, an American soldier named Fred discovers a diary that belongs to Dang Thuy Tram, a medical officer for the People’s Liberation Army. The diary is animated with the life and death of a twenty-four-year-old woman who volunteered for her country, her political beliefs, romantic emotions and her longing for love and devotion to her people. Fred goes against orders to burn anything that has nothing to do with the army and keeps it safe. To him, Dang Thuy Tram’s diary is the source of strength that keeps him going through the brutal gunfire and a debt that he feels he must repay. Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the diary is returned to her family. [Source]

9. Ganh Xiec Rong/ The Traveling Circus (1988)

Director: Viet Linh

A bittersweet story of famine-ridden villagers, tricked by an illusion of food into helping a circus that is secretly searching for gold in their region. Through the eyes of a young villager, we witness how their naive hope has tragic consequences. Banned for two years in Vietnam because officials considered its themes potentially subversive, director Viet Linh was required to change the title of the film from The Conjurer’s Tricks to There Was Once a Man Who Was Greedy for Gold to its final title. One of the most internationally acclaimed Vietnamese movies from the 1980s, it is rarely shown in Vietnam or abroad. [Source]

8. Mua Len Trau/ Buffalo Boy (2004)

Director: Nguyen Vo Nghiem Minh

Set along the southern coast of Vietnam during the French occupation in the 1940s, water is everywhere, giving life and bringing decay and rot. Kim is 15; his father and step-mother have two buffalo, their lifeline as subsistence rice farmers. During the rainy season, there’s no grass and the buffalo are starving. Kim volunteers to take the beasts inland to find food. On this coming-of-age journey, Kim sees men mistreat women, men fight with men, and French taxes rob the poor. He works for Lap, a buffalo herder whose past is entangled with Kim’s parents, and he makes friends who will lead him to his place in the world. [Source]

7. Xich Lo/ Cyclo (1995)

Director: Tran Anh Hung

A “cyclo” is a bicycle-drawn taxi similar to a rickshaw, and, in this story, the nickname of an 18-year-old boy trying to scrape together a living in the desperate poverty of Ho Chi Mihn City. Cyclo lives with his grandfather (Le Kinh Huy) and two sisters (Tran Nu Yen-Khe and Pham Ngoc Lieu), and drives his taxi for a bitter woman (Nhu Quynh Nguyen) who devotes most of her time to her mentally unstable son (Bjuhoang Huy). When the pedal-cab is stolen, Cyclo is forced into a life of crime to repay the debt and falls in with a group of petty thugs led by a self-styled poet (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). What Cyclo doesn’t know at first is that the poet is also a pimp, and he’s been using his romantic wiles to lure Cyclo’s older sister into a career as a prostitute. Cyclo was directed by Tran Anh Hung, whose breakthrough film was the acclaimed drama The Scent of Green Papaya. [Source]

6. Song Trong So hai/ Living in Fear (2005)

Director: Bui Thac Chuyen

Tai, a soldier in South Vietnam, had 2 wives living in 2 different places. When the war ended in 1975, he brought his second wife and her child to a new land which was littered with land mines and bombs leftover from the war. As a loser, he had no choice. He built a small house for himself. He worked extremely hard to earn money. One day, while having a drink with a Cong San named Nam Duc, he found out another way to earn his living. Nam Duc was a good mine clearer and he collected barbwire in the minefields in exchange for alcohol. Tai was taught how to earn money in that way by Nam Duc. Tai went to the minefield at the risk of his life and cleared land-mines. He collected scraps from the minefield. He had money to bring up his 2 wives and children. However, he understood that scraps would run out one day. He discovered a new way to be paid…He cleared land-mines daily for cultivation land. He dug for land-mines and took them out of land. And he had a simple conclusion: land-mines were only dangerous when they were stepped over. If being taken out, they were like stones [Source]

5. Ba Mua/ Three Seasons (1999)

Director: Tony Bui

An American in Ho Chi Minh City looks for a daughter he fathered during the war. He meets Woody, a child who’s a street vendor, and when Woody’s case of wares disappears, he thinks the soldier took it. Woody hunts for him. A cyclo driver, Hai, gives a ride to Lan, a hotel call girl, and starts waiting for her daily; he falls in love with her and tries to break through her tough veneer. Kien An, a young woman, takes a job harvesting lotuses in the ponds of Teacher Dao, a reclusive man who has leprosy. Her singing awakens him from depression, and he asks her to write down poetry he has composed. The characters’ paths cross in small ways, around flowers and kindnesses. [Source]

4. Ao Lua Ha Dong/ The White Silk Dress (2006)

Director: Huynh Luu

The love story of Dan (a beautiful young woman) and Gu (a humpback), servants from two separate households in Ha Dong, Vietnam who have suffered most of their lives at the hands of their cruel masters. The couple flee south soon after Gu presents Dan with a wedding gift – the precious white silk dress his mother had owned (his one valuable possession), while he promises her a proper marriage someday in the future. The couple arrive in the seaside town of Hoi An and build a new life, with Dan ultimately giving birth to 4 daughters. Despite struggling through immense poverty and hardships, the family is happy and fulfilled as long as they have each other, but the horrors of the encroaching war brings tragedy and threatens to tear them apart. [Source]

3. Thuong Nho Dong Que/ Nostalgia for the Countryland (1995)

Director: Dang Nhat Minh

Nostalgia for the Countryside explores the tensions and traumas of everyday life in a rural Vietnamese village. The arrival from abroad of Quyen, who fled the village as a small girl, coincides with the sexual awakening of 17-year-old Nham, through whose eyes the story unfolds.

While picturesque on the surface, the countryside that Quyen dreamed about turns out to be a landscape of poverty, passion and tragedy – though not without pockets of warmth and humor.

Highly controversial at the time of its release, Nostalgia for the Countryside has been acclaimed as a masterpiece, due largely to the sensitive and compassionate storytelling of director Dang Nhat Minh. [Source]

2. Mui Du Du Xanh/ The Scent of the Green Papaya (1993)

Director: Tran Anh Hung

The interior life of a Vietnamese household in the 1950s, as seen through the eyes of a young servant girl, is explored in Tran Anh Hung’s placid, but visually intoxicating tone poem, L’Odeur de la Papaye Verte. The film begins in 1951, when the beautiful and inquisitive 10-year-old peasant girl Mui (Lu Man San) is hired to work at the home of an affluent Saigon family. When the father absconds with the family’s money, the tireless mother (Truong Thi Loc) is forced to support the family through the slim profits of her tiny fabric store. As the family struggles to make ends meet, Mui becomes attracted to a friend of the family, Khuyen (Vuong Hoa Hoi). The film then shifts to 1961, when the family is in desperate straits. The father has died, and Mui (Tran Nu Yen-Khe), now twenty years old, finds herself working in Khuyen’s home. Khuyun has grown into an attractive, sophisticated French-speaking pianist, with his own expensive mistress. Mui serves him as she has served the family — with perfection and silence. She also loves Khuyen is silence, and gradually Khuyen begins to take notice of Mui’s love for him. [Source]

1. Bao Gio Cho Den Thang Muoi/ When the Tenth Month Comes (1984)

Director: Dang Nhat Minh

Wartime love and devotion is the focus of this melancholy story about Duyen (Nguyen Huu Muoi), a woman who hides her husband’s death in order to spare his elderly father. When she goes to visit her husband who was sent to fight along the Cambodian border and discovers that he has been killed in action, Duyen cannot reveal the tragic news to his parents and family because his father is both very old, and sick. Soon her grief is too great, and she confides her secret to a friend, Han, and asks him to fake letters from her dead husband to keep the myth going. As she battles her despair, her husband appears to her as a ghostly apparition and in a gentle, understated way, exhorts her to continue living. But her deception cannot last forever, and in the meantime, Han has fallen in love with her. [Source]

Ten other notable films that did not make the top 20 list (in alphabetical order):

Anh Va Em/ Siblings (1986) by Tran Vu

Ben Khong Chong/ Wharf of Widows (2000) by Luu Trong Ninh

Co Gai Tren Song/ Girl on the River (1987) By Dang Nhat Minh

Chung Cu/ Collective Flat (1999) by Viet Linh

Di Trong Giac Ngu/ Walking in Sleep (2005) by Pham Loc

Doi Cat/ Sandy Lives (1999) by Nguyen Thanh Van

Duong Thu/ Letter Road (2005) by Bui Tuan Dung

Giai Phong Sai Gon/ Liberating Sai Gon (2004) by Long Van

Nguoi Dan Ba Mong Du/ Sleep-Walking Woman (2003) by Nguyen Thanh Van

Vuot Song/ Journey From the Fall (2006) by Tran Ham