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I grabbed my first chance to see this film in the cinema on a big screen. The film is a wonder in so many aspects and definitely live up to its Camera d'Or at Cannes, and also my own expectation. I love how realistic and organic every scene is about the daily life in Vietnam from the big city to the rural area. The first half deceived me a bit into thinking how simple the film had been and then it went on to astonish me with its dreamlike second half, so mesmerizing and even haunting. There are just so many brilliant scenes. The scene of the fighting roosters in early morning is simply a masterful in long take but also a brief scene, like of the buffaloes blocking the road is immediately thought provoking. That ending is above all, to me simply perfect. It's just so wonderful I would love to meet the filmmakers and shake hand with all of them :)

Very refreshing and I don't mean the summer rain :) It's the parade style like the Canal Parade in Amsterdam so it's real fun (River Parade). A real party in the French capital with a lot of dancing. The city of Paris is just fantastic from above and the scene at Le Cour de cassation is 'bloody' beautiful. The light show by the Eiffel tower is a joy to behold and for a second I wondered if it would become the Olympics torch :) But then the biggest surprise for me was the finale when you heard the intro of Edith Piaf's L' Hymne a l'amour and you see a figure on the second level of the Eiffel tower none other than Celine Dion, with such a comeback.

Thanks to my sister's visit I finally get to watch the film and I have to admit I was anxious because of so much controversy and the love/hate around it. Fortunately the film was taken on so beautifully by the filmmakers that it was really a wonderful and quite emotional screening. All the actors are well cast and fulfilled their roles. I really enjoyed them all. I think the music department did a wonderful job of handling the gigantic amount of works of the great musician, employing just enough numbers of songs and composing just a perfect score. The cinematography is stunning also. But then again it's the way the story is structured and presented to us that is the most interesting aspect because it leaps back and forth quite organically between the past and the more recent years to conjure up the feelings and memory. Consider just a small halfway around the world telephone scene between Trinh Cong Son and Khanh Ly not too long into the film you can feel the bonding and the special love between these two people, more than anything they are friend, soulmates, transcending even romance which might be seen as the dominant genre the film is categorized.