The Scent of Green Papaya ***
(Park) Americans have always experienced Vietnam from the outside, first seeing the country and its people through an unpopular war and later revisiting Saigon, the jungles, the villages and the rice paddies through films made by outsiders about that war. In an assured debut that won the Camera d'Or at Cannes for best first feature and an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film, Vietnamese writer-director Tran Anh Hung takes us inside a household similar to the one of his childhood and introduces us to a culture never before seen on the screen.
The scent of unripened papaya, a fruit prepared daily by the hard-working Vietnamese women who are the heart of the home, unlocks the director's memory of Saigon. With little interest in plot, the film lingers on plants, food, floors, windows--all the things of everyday life that people rarely recall in such exquisite detail--and on rituals performed with time-clock regularity. A contemplation piece unspools to the slow, serene rhythms of the daily comings and goings of an ordinary family.
As in the films of Ozu, details are not selected because of what they add to reality, but for what they reveal about character. The delicate design centers on the acts of a servant girl who joins the family in 1951 and gradually flowers into a lovely woman through years of selfless and disciplined devotion.
Using few words, Tran has found a voice for the Vietnamese experience. Yet his message of spirituality through servitude will sound very foreign to Western ears unfamiliar with Buddhism, and the film's deep meditative pace will put more than a few Americans to sleep. Unrated.
--Susan Tavernetti