THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA Movie Review

Mui du du Xanh

The debut feature from director Tran Anh Hung is so assured and quietly intoxicating that—despite its deceptively languid pace—it may be nearly over before you realize that more than 90 minutes have passed. Set in Saigon in the 1950s and 1960s, this is the story of a young peasant girl who arrives from the countryside to take a job as servant to a bourgeois family. The day-to-day and minute-by-minute details of her routine are documented with a fluid, poetic intensity that creates a palpable tension seemingly out of thin air. As the child grows into a woman and the dynamics of the film's power structure begin to shift (she finds herself working for a seductive composer in the story's second half), The Scent of Green Papaya gradually takes on an inevitable political dimension that is wondrously devoid of stridency. Filmed in rich, dreamlike colors that make you think you've seen a 3-D movie, the film also features one of the most delicately powerful soundtracks in recent memory. (These carefully designed and richly lit images of the Vietnam of the director's memory were—rather astoundingly—filmed on a sound stage in France.) Tran's stunning and auspicious first feature was followed by the equally impressive but very different Cyclo.

NEXT STOP … Cyclo, Chocolat, Ramparts of Clay

1993 104m/C VT Tran Nu Yen-Khe, Lu Man San, Truong Thi Loc, Vuong Hoa Hoi; D: Tran Anh Hung; W: Tran Anh Hung, Patricia Petit; C: Benoit Delhomme; M: Ton That Tiet. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘93: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS, LV COL