Tre stagioni

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.

i was not really into art films had not my anthro class required me to watch the film Three Seasons. Initial impression: Subtle, Asian version of Magnolia. Although Magnolia gave a hard stroke on American life and beauty by presenting brutish and twisted lives of different people, Three Seasons was softer and was more focused on redemption and search for contentment and happiness in life through a plain yet colorful lives of different Vietnamese and an American. The pictures were astonishing and moving--you feel what you see and it was such an enigma to evoke such essence of a story without flooding the whole of the movie with rhetorical lines and words. the enigma i felt was the same when i watched Magnolia but i think i love this movie more than it. Three Seasons did not have enough words but the pictures were really great. i personally love the song of Kien An and the petal shower before the story ends--they were so impressing. The biggest lesson i got in the story is that dreams somehow and someday will come true, our search for happiness and contentment will end in a different way we intended. i have to thank my anthro professor, i have to thank Three Seasons. ;-)

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")

"Three Seasons" has many layers of complexity, yet it's executed in a deceptively simple and poetic fashion which seems to just flow off the screen. Some may find it too long or may perhaps feel the film seems to get lost in all its elegance. However, hang in there, the payoff comes through understanding it in its entirety.

"Three Seasons" is a touching and poignant display of Vietnamese society and the dramatic changes it's going through. The cinematography and direction were beautiful and reminded me a bit of the film "Scent of Green Papaya".

The movie is a collection of at least four different stories, all taking place in Saigon in the present day. Basically, each story is about the struggle to survive, both physically and spiritually in an ever changing and modernized society. Class struggle, the influence from the West (both bad and good), exploitation of children, and corruption of the soul are examined. We are told that like the lotus, some will fall in the mud, and others will fall in a rich pond. "Three Seasons" follows the lives of these flowers and the purity and divinity within them.

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.