Three Seasons

USA/Vietnam 1998

Reviewed by Geoffrey Macnab

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Vietnam, the present day. Kien An starts a new job picking white lotuses for Teacher Dao, a reclusive master. While at work, she sings an old song her mother taught her many years ago. After hearing her, Dao invites her to his inner sanctum and asks her to write down his dictated poems since he has lost his fingers through leprosy. Meanwhile, impoverished kid Woody wanders the streets of Ho Chi Minh City in the rain with a suitcase full of cigarettes and lighters to sell to tourists. He comes across ex-GI James Hager, who is searching for the daughter he left behind after the US-Vietnam war. Woody loses his suitcase and mistakenly thinks Hager stole it. His master won't allow him home until he retrieves it.

Hai, a cyclo driver, becomes obsessed with Lan, a young prostitute. He begins to wait for her every night outside the hotels where she services western clients. He earns a big cash prize for winning a cyclo race and with the winnings pays for a night with Lan in a hotel room. To her surprise, he only wants to watch her sleep. Woody finds his suitcase. Kien An's master dies. Hager is reunited with his daughter. Hai tracks Lan down to her grubby apartment. Ashamed of her profession, she tries to make him leave, but is eventually won over by his protestations of love.

Review

Three Seasons portrays Vietnam as a country of glaring contrasts: beautiful lotus-strewn rivers and ancient temples on the one hand; the squalor of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) on the other. Writer-director Tony Bui (now 26) may have grown up in Northern California, but his sympathies here are with the Vietnamese, not the rich westerners visiting the country. Bui repeatedly contrasts the struggles of the locals with the pampered luxury the tourists enjoy. Early on, we see two tourists sitting in the back of a cyclo, sightseeing, blithely unaware of their driver's agony as he pedals uphill.

Rather than analyse the social conditions in Vietnam, Bui (who left the country as a young child) uses them as the backcloth for a very sentimental folk tale. His characters could have stumbled from the pages of Dickens: there's Woody the waif who roams the streets selling cigarettes, Lan the beautiful but unhappy prostitute, Hai the big-hearted cyclo driver and Kien An the demure lotus picker. There's even a gnarled ex-GI (Harvey Keitel at his most lugubrious, also the film's executive producer) who haunts the city in search of the daughter he left behind in the war. ("I just know it's time to find her... to make some sort of peace with this place," he mumbles.)

Bui made Three Seasons in reaction to US war movies in which the Vietnamese are depicted "as faceless people running through the jungle with guns," but he risks replacing one set of stereotypes with another. Outside Woody's Fagin-like boss, there is hardly an unsympathetic Vietnamese character in the film. Outside Keitel's kind-hearted GI, westerners (and western influence) are invariably seen as a force for the bad.

It is intriguing to compare Bui's vision of contemporary Vietnam with that offered by Tran Anh Hung in Cyclo. Like Bui, Hung was born in Vietnam but educated abroad (in his case, in France). Cyclo is also set in Ho Chi Minh City and features rickshaw drivers, vagabonds and prostitutes. Instead of picture-postcard imagery, its city is one where corruption is always festering close to the surface, with vicious turf wars going on between pedicab drivers, gangland killings, and drug abuse. Cyclo has a delirious, expressionistic quality to its film-making which Bui doesn't come close to matching. Where Cyclo is dark and ironic, Three Seasons is optimistic and benevolent in tone. But there's a thin line between optimism and mawkishness. Whereas the street kid in Walter Salles' Central Station was tough and resilient, Woody is a doe-eyed little boy lost. The story of the prostitute and the driver obsessed with her is uncomfortably close to Mona Lisa. As Bui flits between the four main characters, there are lapses in continuity editing. (Whenever Woody is on screen, it is pouring with rain, but as soon as Hai appears, the weather miraculously clears up.)

Three Seasons is exquisitely shot and in its own naive, lyrical way, is also often moving. Bui is an accomplished (if very manipulative) storyteller. Whether through the poetry the leprosy-ravaged master dictates to Kien An as he prepares to die, the imagery of Woody asleep beside the little girl in the rain, or the big emotional set-pieces (for instance, the ex-GI finally meeting his daughter), the young writer-director knows how to crank up the pathos and makes the one big action sequence - the cyclos hurtling through the city - almost as dynamic as the chariot race in Ben Hur. The portrayal of modern-day Vietnam may sometimes seem as ersatz as the fake lotuses sold on the street corners, but taken as simple melodrama, Three Seasons just about stays afloat.

Credits

Director
Tony Bui
Producers
Jason Kliot
Joana Vicente
Tony Bui
Screenplay
Tony Bui
Story
Tony Bui
Timothy Linh Bui
Director of Photography
Lisa Rinzler
Editor
Keith Reamer
Production Designer
Wing Lee
Music
Richard Horowitz
©October Films, Inc.
Production Companies
October Films presents an Open City production in association with Goatsingers and Giai Phong Film Studios
Developed with the assistance of the Sundance Institute
Executive Producer
Harvey Keitel
Co-executive Producer
Charles Rosen
Co-producer
Timothy Linh Bui
Line Producer
Trish Hoffman
Associate Producer
Ben Bohen
Production Liaison
Le Cung Bac
Production Supervisor
David Phu An Chiem
Production Co-ordinators
New York:
Susan Leber
Ho Chi Minh City:
Elizabeth Ann Chae
Mark Taylor
Unit Production Managers
Peter Schon
Phan Huy Huyen
Location Managers
Martha C. Pilcher
2nd Unit:
Vu Huy Chau Bao
Production Consultant
Kieu An
2nd Unit Director
Timothy Linh Bui
Assistant Directors
Julian Petrillo
Pham Ngoc Chau
Suzanne Nicell
Sam Coates
2nd Unit:
Quan Lelan
Script Supervisor
Monika von Manteuffel
Casting Director
Quan Lelan
2nd Unit Director of Photography/Camera Operator
Jamie Maxtone-Graham
Steadicam Operator
William S. Arnot
Special Effects
Russell Berg
David Watkins
Additional Editing
Jay Rabinowitz
Additional Film Editor
Victoria Toth
Editorial Consultant
Sam O'Steen
Art Directors
Pham Hong Phong
Michele De Albert
Set Decorator
Thai Van Hoang
Storyboard Artist
Colin McGreal
Costume Designer
Ghia Ci Fam
Wardrobe
Supervisor:
Tran Thi Ngoc Loan
2nd Unit:
Truong Thi Hong
Key Hair/Make-up
Nguyen Kieu Thu
Make-up
Additional:
Heang Nga
Vu Van Viet
Phuong Trinh
2nd Unit:
Nguyen My Loan
Special Effects Make-up
Bob Laden
Main Title Design
NY Bureau
Main Title Opticals
Cineric Inc
Opticals
REI Media Group
Vietnamese Songs Composer
Vy Nhat Tao
Musicians
Dan Bau/Dan Tranh/The Moon:
Duc Thanh
Khen/Dau Tranh/Bass Flute:
Jaron Lanier
Vocals:
Sussan Deyhim
Keyboards/Percussions:
Richard Horowitz
Music Supervisor
S.A. Lippman
Music Mixers
James Nichols
Richard Horowitz
Soundtrack
"Good Ol' Rock-N-Roll" by/performed by Eugene Chrysler; "Don't Forget about Me" by Eugene Chrysler, performed by Eugene Chrysler and his Hillbilly Shake; "Black Night" by Jessie Mae Robinson, performed by Charles Brown; "Woody's Blues" by Page Hamilton, performed by Page Hamilton, Wharton Tiers
Sound Mixers
Curtis Choy
Brian Miksis
Re-recording Engineers
Reilly Steele
Sound One
Supervising Sound Editors
Steve Hamilton
Dave Paterson
Mary Ellen Porto
ADR
Vietnam:
Bong Sen Film Studio
Foley
Artist:
Beth Henderson
Dialogue Supervisors
Tran Anh Hoa
Pham Van Son
Film Extract
High Plains Drifter (1972)
Cast
Don Duong
Hai
Nguyen Ngoc Hiep
Kien An
Tran Manh Cuong
Teacher Dao
Zoë Bui
Lan
Nguyen Huu Duoc
Woody
Thach Thi Kim Trang
little girl
Harvey Keitel
James Hager
Minh Ngoc
truck driver
Hoang Phat Trieu
Huy
Diem Kieu
singing lotus woman
Kieu Hanh
Giang
Le Hong Son
Binh
Nguyen Ba Quang
Don
Tran Huu Su
Ngon
Luong Duc Hung
Minh
Hoang Trieu
Tran Long
men who chase Lan
Bui Tuong Trac
man who buys lotus flowers
Huynh Kim Hong
woman on balcony
Michael Salamon
man who steals case
Nguyen Van Son
shoeshine boy
A Lu
Hong Phu Quang
street guardians
Tran Quang Hieu
'Fagan'
Duong Tan Dung
cyclo-race promoter
Ho Van Hoang
Khoi
Ho Kieng
restaurant owner
Ngo Quang Hai
man in taxi
Van Es Antonie
body double for Mr Keitel
Hong Khac Dao
parlour manager
Pham Van Thai
parlour friend
Othello Khan
Phuong's drunk boyfriend
Lola Guimond
Phuong, Amerasian daughter
Nguyen Thanh Son
cyclo-race official
Nguyen Thi Ngoc
Teacher Dao's servant
Nguyen Thi Lien
grandmother
Certificate
12
Distributor
Pathé Distribution
9,765 feet
108 minutes 30 seconds
Dolby stereo SR
Colour by
DuArt
Prints by
FotoKem
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011