"There's a difference between the cinema of experience and what I try to do, which is the cinema of expression," Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung has stated. "I want to create images which are as palpable and sensual as possible, but which have a spiritual resonance."
He managed to pull that off very effectively in The Scent of Green Papaya, a sense-luscious film about a servant girl in 1950's Saigon. This new film, set in Hanoi, revolves around three sisters and the secrets that bubble beneath the peaceful facade of their domestic lives. The cinematography of Mark Lee Ping-Bin, who also shot In the Mood for Love, vividly conveys the stunning beauty of the city in summer with flowers and foliage in full bloom.
In the opening scenes, the youngest sister Lien (Tran Nu Yen-Khe) awakens in an apartment she shares with her brother Hai (Ngo Quanq Hai). She revels in the fact that strangers on the street take them for a couple. Lien works at a cafe run by her oldest sister Suong (Nguyen Nhu Quynh), who is married to a photographer. While her husband is away on a work trip, she secretly carries on an affair. The middle sister Khanh (Le Khanh) is married to Kien (Tran Manh Cuong), a writer trying desperately to finish his first novel. Finding out that she is expecting their first child, he departs for Saigon where he's tempted to betray his wife with an attractive businesswoman.
The Vertical Ray of the Sun, which starts with the anniversary of their mother's death and ends a month later on their father's death day, subtly reveals the passions simmering in the secrets of these sisters. All three, it turns out, have been trying to deal with the revelation that their beloved mother may have been untrue to her husband.
Tran Anh Hung's cinema of expression seduces our senses and draws us into this Chekhovian drama. While the sisters struggle to embody the Confucian ideal of harmony, their inner lives are filled with volatile feelings that cannot be stifled. The summer sun brings these emotions to full boil and suddenly nothing will ever be the same between them.
Films about Sisters
