Ba mùa

Kien An takes a job harvesting white lotuses in the fields belonging to a reclusive man and then selling them in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. After her song catches the ear of Teacher Dao, he invites her to his home where she engages him and starts to write the poetry he has within him. At the same time a cyclo driver collects Lan as a standard fare and, despite her being a working girl, decides to wait for her, quickly becoming practically her own private cyclo driver; however his interest in her quickly becomes love and he tries to break though her tough exterior to find her heart. Meanwhile on the streets of the city, Woody is a street kid selling cigarettes out of briefcase in all weather. It is here where he meets James Hager, an American looking for a daughter he believes he fathered during the war. After meeting James, Woody loses his case and believing James robbed him, sets out to find him. These three stories barely touch but are delivered as all part of the same one in this film.

The only thing I knew about this film prior to watching it was that it was the first American film to be made in Vietnam once the embargo was lifted and that inspectors for the Vietnamese government observed the entire process. With this acting as a hook for me, I decided to give this film a stab and in a way I am glad that I did. The film does the well-known technique of mixing together several stories with a vague connection (in this case seemingly flowers or some general meetings between the characters) and this succeeds in making it interesting while at the same time preventing it from really becoming as engaging as it should have been. The stories all have enough going for them to get an audience interesting in the various characters but sadly none of the three stories are original or emotionally involving enough on their own or in combination to make this a particularly impressive film. The three tales all pretty much go where you expect them to, even if some of them are pretty unlikely and unconvincing; it's a shame of course as this could have had a place in history and been really good but instead it is just OK.

The thing that will stick in my mind is how good the film looked and most of this is down to the cinematography and the direction of Tony Bui. For all his weaknesses in his plot and script, Bui makes the city look appealing without simplifying or sweetening it – the use of colour is nice but for me it was more enjoyable to see the energy, bustle and depravity of the city itself. For the western audience, Harvey Keitel is naturally going to be the biggest draw but he actually does very little other than be his own reliable self in a minor character. Duong is slightly more impressive and he plays a hackneyed character well enough to make it better than it should have been. However he, like the others, are hampered by the material to some extent. Ngoc Hiep Nguyen is sweet and pretty good; Huu Duoc Nguyen is probably the best thing in the film as he is convincing and never slips into 'cute kid' mode. Bui is alright as Lan but her character is far too simple to really allow her to have the tools to work with.

Overall this is an interesting film that is good enough to be worth seeing however it is hard to really ignore how basic the plots all turn out to be and it isn't as emotionally impacting as it could have been. The direction is good and the performances are as good as the material allows them to be but without a better script the film cannot really be more than OK.

Tony Bui's "Three Seasons" takes place in the teeming nightlife and the majestic hotels and the open marketplace and squalor of modern day Saigon. It is symbolically a film about traveling the historical past and present, put together in four uneven vignettes and how the lives of five people crisscross each other. Bui is not obtrusive and so his film is gentle and sweet and he lets his actors play out their roles with naturalness and grace. The gentleness of this film can be both its strength and weakness, because you leave thinking about discrete images beautifully photographed but you don't really have a sense of what Bui was trying to say. The image of sweat running down the face of cyclo drivers and the red abrasions on naked skin across the woman's back caused by a spoon are just two examples. Also, unlike Western soap opera, he isn't here to manipulate. Take the old man, Master Dao and his terribly scarred up face and amputations. Dao could have been afflicted by the after effects of napalm or a land mine explosion but, no, he has an old-fashioned affliction, leprosy. There is no post-Vietnam hate in Bui. The spirited cycle race through the streets of Saigon descends upon us without much buildup nor dramatics. We don't realize the significance of Hai winning this race till we see what he does with his winnings. Perhaps the few times Bui decides he needs to make an explicit statement, he does so with subtlety: the plastic lotus flowers which outsell the naturally grown ones, the opulent, newer hotels rising in Saigon turning the society into truly haves and have nots (what Bui calls the people of shadows), and the hardworking cyclo driver straining to move his vehicle as his Western couple occupants chatter oblivious to his struggles. The other weakness of "Three Seasons" is that the four vignettes are so interesting that each could have occupied the entire film. Instead we get incomplete servings from all four and a hunger to know more. Bui spends more time with the cyclo drive and the prostitute and the water lily girl and her poetic master. The story about the street smart little boy, who is forever in the rainy streets looking for his missing case of trinkets to sell and finding both the case and a tender companion in the end, could have stood by itself. Similarly, the Vietnam vet who comes back to find his lost daughter because he has to 'right a wrong' is a beautiful piece that needed more detail than what the film provided. The final scene of "Three Seasons" summarizes this film neatly - the falling crimson pedals from trees lining a boulevard. It is picturesque in its beauty but the meaning of it is more effervescent than lasting.

There are not very many movies that can put the viewer into the trance that this one did. It left me wondering why more American films can't be made like this, with subtlety and an eye for simplistic beauty and peace in nature. The many scenes at night in the rain-soaked city only provide a stark contrast to the scenes with lotus flowers and singing, thus making them more effective and fresh. Above this, the characters were intriguing. None had a life even remotely like mine, and this is probably likewise for 99% of Americans, who live in a fast-track, needlessly complicated, and mostly material world. Materialism exists in Three Seasons, but is seen as the enemy (the plastic lotus flowers) or (in the case of the prostitute) something to overcome. I left the theatre feeling somewhat wistful that there are not more films like this being produced today.

In the contemporary Ho Chi Minh, former Saigon, Kien An (Ngoc Hiep Nguyen) is a worker hired to gather and sell lotus for her master, Professor Dao (Manh Cuong Tran). Dao was a handsome poet, who is dying of leprosy. He lost his fingers, and Kien offers herself to write his poetries for him. Hai (Don Duong) is a tricycle-taxi driver, who falls in love for the expensive hooker Lan (Diep Bui). Woody is a homeless little child, working as street peddler of watches, cigarette lighters and other minor goods, who has his wallet stolen. He believes that the thief is James Hager (Harvey Keitel), a former marine who is looking for his daughter with a Vietnamese woman during the war. These three parallel bitter and beautiful stories present in a metaphoric view, the transition of the political and economical system of Vietnam. Professor Dao represents the traditional system, the communism, rotten and dying. Lan is a metaphoric view of the transition to the capitalism, corrupted, aimed and unattainable for most of the poor population. Woody and the little girl represent the next generations of excluded of the new wild system, fighting for the survival and having no perspective in life. James Hager would be the return of the American interests in Vietnam. I am intrigued with the title of this film: "Three Seasons". The lotus means the spring, the hard rain means the winter; the fallen leaves, the autumn. Where is the summer and why is it missing? "Three Seasons" is a highly recommended movie, open to the most different interpretations by the viewers. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Três Estações" ("Three Seasons")

This film is sheer poetry! The three seasons are actually three vignettes, interpersonal connections which all touch the others in strange and moving ways. (Harvey Keitel is moving as a VietNam war vet who has returned to search for his Amerasian daughter.) The use of flowers and color as metaphor for the "opening" of VietNam after the war is truly striking. Don't miss this film.