The Scent Of Green Papaya

Story of peasant 10 year old girl becoming servant for bourgeois family with couple of their sons making her life difficult. However, she lives through it doing her chores and when it goes out of business she goes to work for their friend who is accomplished professional pianist with temperamental fiancee and close to her age. It covers period between 1951 and 1961 which is in many ways crucial in modern vietnamese history. Interesting study coming from one of only handful of communist countries still left that I hear was made in France. Communist theme of victory of peasants and workers over old corrupt capitalists is given super spin making communism look very attractive considering... that Saigon was in capitalist south imperial until 1955 then becoming republican but fought by Vietcong until reunification under Vietcong in 1975 in spite of US intervention (combat from 1965) and Paris accords of 1973. Probably made by Vietnamese dissidents or traditionalists living in France. Soundtrack is pretty good. No Ho Chi Min, B52s or napalm in this one, eschewing politics altogether was probably the only way they could get general release for it and international accolades. Kind of beautiful, conformist and subversive at the same time. Opportunism or diplomacy, call it what you like.

I suggest an intense course on watching paint dry as a preparation for viewing this film. After 30 minutes I had lost the will to live.

I loved the tranquility and pace of this film as the beautifully developing relationships are portrayed.

The atmosphere evokes life in Vietnam and urges one to visit this lovely country.

Extraordinarily slow and static, almost hypnotic in its concentration on the minutae of daily life, it promises lots and delivers confusion in the last dying minutes of the whole tedious thing.

1950's Vietnam and a 10 year old girl Mui goes to work for a seemingly well to do family of cloth merchants. However, all is not well, the father permanently grieves for a lost daughter and is prone to disappearing with the family's money. Eventually, they can no longer afford her and the now grown up Mui goes to work for a friend of the family, a sophisticated and wealthy pianist/composer. Before long her quiet beauty starts to have an effect on him. The camera never leaves the confines of either house in this slow, uneventful but fascinating study of another time and place. Shame we don't really get to know the characters involved.