Trois saisons

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. .

The maturity of this young film maker was startling to me. The obviously gorgeous and varied visual feast for one's eyes combined with small subtlteties such as the nipple of the whore's breast showing through the pink nightgown that the cyclo driver gave her.. just a second.. but a revealing moment since all the clothes she dressed in as a whore never revealed her as much. Another example was in the story of the lotus flower girl and the leper.. the more she wrote his poetry the more his face appeared out of the shadows and became lit. The marriage of the visual and lighting movement reflecting the feelings of the characters is rare to see and something to be studied again in this film. And a moving performance by Keitel clearly searching for his humanity. And a perfect bit of casting with the woman who played his grown daughter. The director's sense of timing- not rushed, letting each story unfold, carrying one on the precarious wave of the confused mix of the country's old and the new, the thought provoking issues of the various different kinds of love portrayed..parental love,romantic love, poetic love, the love of beaty where it realy lies....all rare in film making today. Profoundly disturbing scenes of the street children. Nothing like this from a young American film makers that I've seen. And as a worldwide distributor of film, TV and video who tries to support new filmmakers I've seen a fair amount. I would like to know where the poetry came from and how to find it for myself to read and savor it even more.Bravo Tony Bui. Bravo Timothy Bui.

"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.

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.