While
Parisian émigré Tran Anh Hung filmed Cyclo (1996),
a surreal story about the dispossessed in Saigon, he visited
Hanoi for the first time. After the Vietnamese government
banned his 1996 film Cyclo, he decided to redeem
himself with Vertical Ray of the Sun (À La Verticale
de l'Été), a tale of three sisters and their relationship
problems in Hanoi at the height of the summer (to translate
the French title into English). The film begins on the morning
of the annual celebration of the date when their mother died
and ends on the day of the annual banquet in honor of their
late father, so a filial piety theme bookends the film. When
a question is posed about the possibility of an extramarital
affair of the deceased mother during the first celebration,
we are prepared to deal with relationship secrets that later
unfold, laying bare the way all three sisters provide mutual
support amid the ambiguities of the men in their lives and
the expectation in Confucian culture that people will keep
their embarrassing and difficult personal problems to themselves.
Little sister Lien (played by Tran Nu Yen-Khe, the director’s
spouse) is looking for a husband, middle sister Khanh (played
by Le Khanh) is newly pregnant, and big sister Suong (played
by Nguyen Nhu Quynh) is having an extramarital affair. In
preparing the meal, they joke about what it would be like
to fix a dish with a crunchy, tasty penis. Lien and her older
brother Hai (played by Ngo Quang Hai), an extra in movies,
live and socialize together almost as husband and wife, thrusting
the question of possible incest early into the film. To get
attention, Lien pretends to be illegitimately pregnant, a
joke that later provides the only comedy relief to end the
film. Suong is married to Quoc (played by Chu Ngoc Hung),
a photographer who fathered two children at Ha Long Bay, and
he visits the mother and his children from time to time. Eventually,
when Suong draws a line in the sand regarding his infidelity,
he agrees to keep Suong in the center of his life. Khanh is
married to Kien (played by Tran Manh Cuong), a novelist who
one day goes to Saigon for sex in order to relieve his writer’s
block; when his wife discovers a clue about the assignation,
she decides not to make an issue of the indiscretion, reasonably
assured that her husband is really devoted to her. Vertical
Ray of the Sun is a slow-moving film, complete with
the director’s penchant to display water (drinking water,
bathing water, Ha Long Bay, and especially rain), where the
plot is less important than the affirmation of the many virtues
of Vietnamese culture, and the words are less important than
the subtexts, unarticulated emotions, and even the simple
joy of doing physical exercises after getting up from bed
in the morning. The title refers to the way in which sun finds
its way through the many trees of Hanoi to give energy to
the inhabitants of the serene city, a paradigm for Vietnam’s
resilient culture and sensual people. The main aphorism provided
by the movie is that "One should live where one’s soul is
in harmony." For the Beverly Hills cinema patrons who viewed
the film’s first weekend of screening, enthusiastic applause
at the end awaited the last bars of one of many love songs
(including the Vietnamese version of John Lennon’s "Imagine")
that contribute to an atmosphere of Nirvana that somehow makes
the problems of the three sisters seem less perplexing, as
if nature will find a balance when humans cannot. MH
I
want to comment on this film
