A Movie From Vietnam That's Really Worth Seeing

[rpannier]

The movie is "The Owl and The Sparrow" (or you may find it under "Lovely Rose" as I did here in Korea)
The movie is written and directed by Stephane Gauger

The story takes place over the course of a week in present day Saigon. Saigon is depicted as is, an energetic, cold, city of 8 million. It can be a very lonely place for people without family and friends.

Three of these people include a ten year-old girl who has no parents. She has run away from her work as a child laborer that is owned by an unloving, tyrant of an uncle. Now she lives and sleeps in the streets of Saigon selling single rose flowers for a living.
The second person is a young, poor, hardworking animal keeper for the zoo. He has no family and has lived at the zoo his whole life. The third person is a 26 year-old stewardess who is the envy of almost everyone in the movie she has a good job and beauty. But she is unhappy because she lacks direction and often falls into meaningless relationships.

I iknow it sounds sentimental and it's been done many times before -- often quite poorly.

This movie draws its strength from the strong performance of its lead, Han Thi Pham. She does not indulge the camera with incessant grins and cutesy poses that make you want to puke. She is idealistic and is a dreamer (Typical of most ten year olds).

What makes this film very interesting is that it was made by the Vietnamese Film Board.
In the film her parents are dead, she works as a child laborer for an obnoxiously awful uncle -- hardly the worker's paradise you would expect to see depicted.

She goes to the city and first tries to sell postcards to make money and fails miserably. She meets a boy who drums up business for a soup restaurant who introduces her to a woman who uses girls to sell flowers -- Again, hardly a paradise.

One of the other flower girls explains how to create a story to sell flowers and "If you don't sell flowers, you go hungry." She explains in a matter-of-fact style.

The ending unfortunately falls into the sappy, overly sentimental trap that most of these movies do. But, it's to be expected.

This movie was an award winner at
The Los Angeles Film Festival
The San Francisco Asian Film Festival
The Gotham Film Festival
and at Rotterdam

It's worth seeing and if you speak Vietnamese the title of the film is "Cu va chim se se"