THREE SEASONS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is an American film shot in Ho
Chi Minh City with a nearly all Vietnamese cast
looks at various aspects of love, self-image, and
life in modern Vietnam. The images are beautifully
filmed but the story telling is slow and somewhat
enigmatic at times. The stories are reminiscent of
other films. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), +1 (-4 to +4)
THREE SEASONS is an odd melding of Asian film styling with the story telling of Robert Altman. Like Altman's SHORT CUTS the film involves multiple (in this case four) short stories, each developing in parallel and in close geographical proximity but otherwise mostly unrelated. Four plot lines are set in Ho Chi Minh City and begin and end about the same time. In one story a cyclo-driver becomes obsessed with a beautiful prostitute and decides to do whatever it takes to win her. (A cyclo is a bicycle modified with a wide passenger seat in front to be used like a taxi. One sees them frequently in Southeast Asia.) In another plotline a woman comes to the city for a job picking flowers in a lotus pond and selling them in the city. She becomes involved with the recluse who owns the lotus pond. The third story involves a street boy who makes his living selling small items like cigarette lighters from a box. When his box is stolen he must get it back again or go hungry. The fourth plotline involves an American Vietnam veteran who returns to Ho Chi Minh City driven by conscience to find his daughter whose mother he abandoned during the war.
It is very difficult to tell stories of any real plot complexity in a film that is going to tell four stories in as little as 110 minutes. If one adds to it that the pacing of this or many Asian films. Each of the four stories could probably be told in three or four sentences. What is important is not the plot but the texture of the telling and the feeling for what has become of Saigon after it became Ho Chi Minh City. We see a daily life that in some ways is not that different from what we have in the United States. The story of the cyclo-driver and that of the street boy could take place in just about any big city with few modifications. The man looking for his daughter, the least developed of the four stories, might also, but would be much more likely to occur in Vietnam, with its particular problem of abandoned mothers. The story of the lotus pond probably would not work any place but Asia.
THREE SEASONS was written and directed by Tony Bui, based on his own stories. Bui was born in Vietnam, but raised in the US and this constitutes a return to his parents' land. It is the first American independent film shot in Vietnam since the war. The film stays away from politics, however, no doubt in part because it had to be passed by Communist censors and had to play in the United States. Curiously they do not seem to object to the film calling the city Saigon rather than its more politically correct name in Vietnam. The film plays double duty as a fiction film and as a documentary look at what Bui saw when he returned to his country. Bui has the eye of an artist with much of the Asian sense of color. We see this in the cyclo-race that is the centerpiece of one of the stories and in the sensuous pleasure the camera takes in the bright red blossoms of a country scene.
THREE SEASONS--where the title comes from us unclear since it seemed to me to take place over a much shorter period of time--is what used to be called a feast for the eyes but remains a simple quiet little film and not one that says very much. I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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