A hit at the Sundance Festival, 26 year-old writer-director Bui's debut is an exqusitely shot love letter to the modern Vietnam, filmed on location in Saigon and co-produced by Keitel. Constructed as three interwoven storylines involving a lotus picker, a young street urchin selling cigarettes and lighters to tourists, and a cyclo driver obsessed with a young prostitute, it's a lyrical and quietly moving melodrama.
Three Seasons is a series of interweaving stories about loss and redemption in the lives of four characters living in Ho Chi Minh City. Its strength lies, not in its p... more >
Three Seasons is a series of interweaving stories about loss and redemption in the lives of four characters living in Ho Chi Minh City. Its strength lies, not in its plot or characters, but in the stunning images and dreamlike quality that transports the viewer into a world of sensuous music and soft colors where village women sing while they work, harvesting flowers on a lotus lake.
The main story is about a cyclo driver Hai (Don Duong) who falls in love with a prostitute named Lan (Zoe Bui), He dutifully waits for her each day as she leaves her hotel. When they go to a hotel together, he pays $50 merely to watch her sleep, a gesture that allows her to experience the feeling of being loved for the first time. The second story is about a young lotus picker Kien An, a female orphan (Ngoc Hiep Nguyen) who befriends her employer, Teacher Dao (Manh Cuong Tran), and lovingly copies his poems that he cannot record himself. This gesture allows both to touch the poetic quality of life, the teacher for perhaps the last time.
The other stories involve a five-year old street urchin named Woody (Huu Duoc Nguen) who braves monsoon-like weather to sell trinkets to tourists in order to survive. When the box containing his wares is stolen, he sets out to find it. This brings him in contact with an American, James Hager (Harvey Keitel) in Vietnam to search for the daughter he left behind when the war was over. The director has said that, in Three Seasons, he wanted to bring out the humanity of the people in a way that demonstrated the universality of the human spirit. He has admirably succeeded.
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East meets West in this award winning and critically acclaimed debut feature contrasting the old traditions with modern influences in the new Vietnam. "One of the most... more >
East meets West in this award winning and critically acclaimed debut feature contrasting the old traditions with modern influences in the new Vietnam. "One of the most exquisitely beautiful films you'll see over the next twelve months" Empire < less
