Três Estações

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.

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.

Please do yourself a favor and see this film. It is a beautiful and touching masterpiece. The film is set in a large city in modern day Vietnam. I believe it was Saigon. The film centers around the lives of several individuals. There is the ex-Marine (Harvey Keitel), hanging around an old GI bar (now a restaurant), hoping to find his daughter; The cyle taxi driver, who yearns to romance a local call girl; the flower girl who volunteers to write for a reclusive poet who lost his hands to leperacy; and the little boy who sells watches and cigarette lighters in hotels, bars, and the street. All these characters are weaved beautifully into the story like a boat moving slowly but surely up a river to a wonderful place. I have seen very very few movies in the past several years which qualify as true works of art. This movie is the real deal. .

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")

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.