Les gens de la rizière

Undoubtedly one of the best films that i have seen on village life. The scene where Vong Poeuv cuts his heel with the razor to get rid of the thorn, is heart touching and moving, the artiste has done a nice job. Om's (Vong's wife) scene in the bar/hotel where she drinks and the transformation she has shown from a sensible, responsible housewife to an obsessed and possessed(!) women is excellent. The last daughter prying along with her mother is refreshing. The large family, the little wish for a son, the helplessness and the innocence, the daughters caring reactions towards their mother in the later half of the film-all leave an enduring emotional feeling in the audience. The scene where the couple move in a boat in a lake and collect the lotus flowers is a tribute to the nature, this scene has created a desire in me to visit and see Combodia.

I recommend this film for all those urban audience for i feel that the city people should know the agrarian lifestyle.

"Rice People" / "Neak sre" is a movie about a family who make their living off of the rice that they grow. It is a movie about the challenges that they encounter. I think this movie is the exception rather then the rule of families that have rice fields. In this movie, many things start to go wrong. For example there were at least 6 things in the movie that acted like a domino effect. Producing a negative spiral leading downwards. In a way, this is could be described as a good description of life. However in the movie "Rice People" there is little joy and mostly challenges. There is family-love but love is not always fun and good fortune. Love is also set-backs, sticking together and endurance. So this movie is a pretty good depiction of one family whose love endures through extreme circumstances.

Farmers are the unsung heroes of the world. So it is true in Cambodia. This movie is not a documentary but contains more unbiased information than most of todays documentaries. The hardships of peasant life in a small Cambodian Village, waiting twelve full moons since the last harvest and beginning to prepare the fields for the planting. The incidents that occur are fictional but are taken from real stories of real people collected in a refugee camp. I have traveled for ten years in southeast Asia and seen the setting for this film, but I learned more about the resilience of the people and the communal approach to problems that occur day to day. The scenery is also spectacular.If you are lucky enough to see this on DVD there is an excellent interview with the man who made the movie. He is so selflessly true to the culture I hope he is successful in making another movie in Cambodia.

Cambodian film "Rice people" is an outstanding work of art about the lamentable plight of women in developed countries.This is one of those films which appears absolutely realist as it has been shot in a quasi documentary style.As ideologies and themes of this film are common to most Asian cultures,one can surmise that any Asian person can easily comprehend its fable like texture which eschews any kind of potent didactic stance.Most of the Asian countries have common characteristics such as farmers with more children and distribution of land.Despite its pessimist stance,Rice People has a highly optimistic,positive charm which comes from the belief that things would change for good.All of us feel that sometimes a film does not remain a film.We all feel that some films must become life by depicting life in such a manner that unreal becomes real.In "Rice People",everything becomes life and it is this difficult albeit serene life in a Cambodian village which has been filmed by famous Cambodian director Monsieur Rithy Panh based in Paris.Film critic/Senior French translator/interpreter Lalit Rao spent a couple of hours discussing films about humanist themes with Monsieur Rithy Panh during Osian Cinefan Asian Film Festival 2005 at New Delhi.

The French-Cambodian director Rithy Panh's first feature film is also his most famous work outside documentaries. Unfortunately, the adaptation from the Malaysian parliamentarian writer Shahnon bin Ahmad's "Ranjau Sepanjang Jalan", is too dramatic and overlong, and the non-professional actors can't keep up, so the overall is outdated. Hard to call it a masterpiece of the 1990s.