WHEN THE TENTH MONTH COMES
A film review by Thomas E. Billings
Copyright 1989 Thomas E. Billings
Synopsis: A young woman, living with her in-laws, tries to conceal the fact that her soldier husband was killed in the (Vietnam) war. She has the local schoolmaster write counterfeit letters to the family (presumably from her husband), thereby concealing the news of his death. The schoolmaster begins to fall in love with her, and complications develop.
Vietnam (English subtitles), black and white, 1984, 90 minutes. Director/Writer: Dang Nhat Minh
A young woman journeys to the front, presumably to visit her husband. Instead she learns that he has been dead for nearly a year. She decides to conceal the news from her in-laws, with whom she lives.
To carry out the deception (the precise motivation for which is not made clear in the film), the woman enlists the aid of the village school teacher, who writes counterfeit letters to the family in the name of her dead husband. The letters, though phony, have a strong emotional impact on her, and make her long for her husband.
Meanwhile, the school teacher is slowly falling in love with her, and she starts to have feelings (though restrained) for him. Their association, in the small village they are living in, results in gossip and problems when the local (Communist) Party officials investigate. As a result of the Party investigation, numerous complications arise, and the story continues from there.
This film is clearly a melodrama, as it deals primarily with the topics of grief, family association, and passion. It could be considered to be a soap opera, as it centers on the suffering of a young woman (a very common theme in modern soap operas), though it takes a very restrained approach to the emotions of the subjects. Certainly restraint is not very common in modern soap operas!
Technically, the film has some rather bothersome flaws. At times the editing is very choppy. Also, there is a lot of dialogue that is not subtitled (which, of course, makes it more difficult to understand if you don't speak Vietnamese). Finally, the photography is grainy at times.
Making a recommendation on this film is difficult. In evaluating a melodrama, the issue of emotional development and/or attachment arises. Do you "feel" for the characters? Does the story hold your interest?
I didn't "feel" much for the characters, though I found the story to be, overall, reasonably interesting. The deception aspect was interesting; however it was treated as an assumption of the story. Instead, the story centered on the (less interesting aspects, in my view) grief and restrained passion between the two main characters. Fans of melodrama may find the film to be of interest.
Remark: this film is in limited distribution as part of "The Vietnam Film Project," a touring exhibition organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with assistance from The Asia Society (New York) and the East-West Center (Hawaii).
Reviewer: Thomas E. Billings, Department of Statistics University of California, Berkeley Reviewer contact: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU
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