But i digress: Three Seasons is a beautiful movie, vignette-style, where the paths of a few characters barely touch at times. There are four basic stories. The movie starts with the lotus blossom pickers, among whom there is this beautiful young woman who sings a touching poem while she works. The owner of the lotus pond is a famous poet who has leprosy and lives hidden from the world. After listening to the young woman, the poet summons her up and develops a beautiful and touching relationship with her. Another story is the one of the rickshaw driver who falls in love with a prostitute, and shows her the true meaning of love. Another story is the one starring Harvey Keitel. He goes back to Vietnam searching for a daughter he has never met. When he finally finds her, his heart is broken. Finally, there is the story of two little panhandlers (and when i say little i really mean it: the boy was maybe 8, but the girl couldn't have been more than 5) and their troubles trying to survive in a harsh land. The highlight of this movie is that it shows Vietnam as it is today, in all its raw beauty.

Beautiful and understated (Rating: 4.00)
Review : This film is really four stories in one. Two of them seem to carry greater weight: Kien An, a young woman with a beautiful voice, catches the ear of her employer, Teacher Dao, a poet afflicted with leprosy living in a home or sanatorium in the middle of a lake full of lotus blossoms, which his employees pick and sell in the public market. In a series of moving exchanges, she learns that he no longer writes because the disease has taken away his fingers. She offers to become his scribe; he accepts. Only later, as he nears death, do we learn the significance of the song she sang, which so captivated him.

Hai, a cyclo driver with a heart and mind, falls in love with Lan, a beautiful prostitute who fears emotional involvement. As their relationship progresses we come to know them as complex human beings. Their final scene together is beautifully filmed in an unforgettable setting of falling red leaves.

Woody, a street urchin, touches the heart as he moves through the rainy streets looking like a small ghost in his plastic rain poncho. Someone has stolen his case of contraband goods (US Marine lighters, watches, etc) and he has been told not to return until he gets it back. In the process he finds a new friend.

Keitel plays an ex-marine who is looking for the daughter he fathered during the war. Although his role is much smaller than the advertising would lead you to believe, he turns in a fine, ultimately moving performance in which facial expressions tell the story far better than words. (This is true of the whole film, in fact.)

In a larger sense, one might say that this film is about the search for meaning in an increasingly plastic and temporal society--represented by plastic, scented lotuses, Lan's heavy call-girl makeup, the bar scenes. I trust the authority of the Vietnamese reviewer who said it accurately portrays postwar Vietnamese society as well.

The things I like about this film are: Cinematography, acting, understatement, humanity, and (ultimately) optimism for the future. I felt good when it was over.

What an elegant piece of work! (Rating: 5.00)
Review : This movie is extremily well made. It is so great at so many levels. First, it's an incredibly beautiful movie. From the lotus lake to the rainy, foggy, dark neighborhood, everything is so beautiful and colorful. The sceneries are as beautiful as previous movies about Vietnam; Indochine is another that comes to mind. This film is quite different from the others, as pointed out by many others, in that it's directed by a Vietnamese made intirely in Vietnam, spoken in Vietnamese. For the record, i'm constantly amused by movies that mysteriously assume Vietnamese or foreigners speak English in their free time.

What is startling to me is that none of the reviews I've read seems to ponder about the film's title: Three Seasons. The purpose of the film is to expose the culture, the country, the people, and the soul of Vietnam. With this in mind, I feel the film is very carefully and meaningfully titled. The personality of a place is not in its name; the personality is defined by the experience that you have. Spring, summer, fall, winter all become meaningless. Every place has them. They don't mean anything. Names do not evoke emotions; only experiences do.

Three Seasons depicts Vietnam in three different scenarios: the moderate and beautiful scene of the lotus lake, the scrotching hot summer that the cyclo driver has to endure, and the rainy, foggy, chilly evening that the young boy is familiar with. And it's not just what they are, but also what happen, what people do. These are the personality of the place. Personality defines what something is, not names. How many seasons are they in your hometown?

The beauty of the film is the ability to blend all these seasonally contradicting scenarios into one natural interaction. Never did I feel that it was improbable for the beautiful morning, followed by a burning afternoon, then a devastatingly rainy evening. Somehow, everything flows naturally. It hightlights so convincingly the diversity in personality of the country, and the graceful interaction among them.

Harvey Keitel, who sponsors the film, plays an American who tries to find peace and closure at a place with many old memories. Interestingly, his presense is awkwardly intrusive, as though it wasn't a place for him to be. Dejavu all over again!

There are so many great things about this film -- some explicit, others quite subtle, but all artistically and beautifully portrayed. Beside all that, you are in for a cultural treat. But don't just be amazed by the picture. Think about what they mean.

A "must see" in contemporary cinema (Rating: 5.00)
Review : The stories of an old teacher afflicted by an infirmity, an American and a Vietnamese urchin involved in their own and unique searches and the romance between a call girl and a driver are interwoven in Vietnamese-American Tony Bui's film.

Those three stories represent through careful and masterful imagery, prose and poetry the traditional and ancient Vietnam, the Vietnam that was torn apart by war in recent times and the challenges and hopes of that nation in our days. Harvey Keitel appears in the film and is also its executive producer.

Highly recommended for this movie reminds us of the reason why cinematography is considered an art and not just mere entertainment.

Kaleidoscope of Vietnamese life (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Much like "Amelie", this movie is a reflection of the beauty of everyday reality. The film is a blend of stories about a ricksaw driver, a prostitute, a lotus sales-girl, a leprosy-stricken poet, and an American veteran trying to find his Vietnamese daughter. The characters are all trapped in socially limiting roles, and the story revolves around their quest for happiness.

Combined with a look at the lives of these characters is silent commentary on today's Vietnam, whose rapid transition to quasi-capitalism is leaving many Vietnamese bewildered and alienated. To top things up, the film is shot with excellent camera work, on par with that of "Before the Rain".

Despite the particularity of place, the characters are so universal that audiences anywhere can feel a bond with them, rejoicing and suffering with them over the course of a movie that many would want to watch over and over again.