A life unfolds in breathtaking colour and movement in a symphony of drama…
Like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, The Scent of Green Papaya comes into your view lazily and quietly, giving away no hint of the mystery and joy to be found in its flickering golden light. Opening in the darkness of a early morning in Antebellum Vietnam (before the Vietnam War), young Mui (Man San Lu) is sent to the home of a rich family who live in their own compound within a neighbourhood of an unnamed part of Vietnam. She is to be hired as help along with an existing older servant who helps her understand her role and who everyone in the compound is. And so begins Mui’s time with the family as she keeps her eyes wide and her heart open.
I came across the film of today’s review over ten years ago in a film book by Taschen Publishing. It was only one picture and one block of text. The text was the plot and why the film was important and the image was of young Mui peering over the fences into the family garden. I didn’t know anything about Vietnamese cinema beyond the films from American filmmakers about the later conflict that engulfed the country. Who was the girl? What was she looking at? What was this film? How could I find it? Over the years, I found the film but put off watching it for some reason. I should have not waited so long. I was looking over some of my notes for this film and found that I came to the same conclusion of a lot of the film’s fans: it’s very hard to describe why this film is so good and yet you want to tell other people about it. Everything from its look to its characters is intricate, thoughtful, considered and ardent in its intention. It perfectly captures a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore in Vietnam with all the action taking place in and around the same set for most of the running time of the picture. Hung’s direction makes every single shot so carefully composed that you forget that he’s getting to his story at the same time. In interviews he says that he’s influenced by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujiro Ozu and it’s not hard to see how. Scent… plays out its scenes with young Mui in the centre of events and using the fact that she’s a servant and rarely spoken to unless she is needed (and no, the family hold no cruelty toward her when they do speak with her), the drama of how the father (Ngoc Trung Tran) is foolish with money and frequently disappears with the shop earnings or that the mother (Truong Thi Lôc) doesn’t get on with her mother-in-law (Thi Hai Vo) is shown without Mui having to pry. At the same time, Hung and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (The Merchant of Venice, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) keep the film moving around the house and the people who visit, buy or know the family. Colours, sounds and movements all come together to create a really sensuous experience. The three children in the family are all boys and each is an evolution of the next: eldest Trung (Keo Souvannavong) is the man of the house when his father leaves, Lam (Nhat Do) in the middle feels the pinch of his father’s absences and youngest Tin (Gerard Neth) contents himself with ruining Mui’s day. The last part is interesting because Tin waits until people are not around to torment Mui who does nothing to deserve it. But like in other family dynamics, there’s always someone who notices and brooding Lam spots his brother’s behaviour and threatens the attention of the matriarch in the matter. Tin soon scarpers. Little things like this and Mui’s helping of the suitor of the mother-in-law to see his former beloved help flesh out the little details before the final act.
Mui as a character is our eyes and ears in this world but Hung does not leave her in a bubble, where she can only see but not touch, and she is curious about her world. She is fascinated by the Papaya that grows in the family vegetable garden and marvels at its intricate insides. This is an extension of her willingness to explore her world, even if it ends at the walls of the family compound. She talks with others without pause, listens closely to the older servant who lives with the family and in content to be in the arms of the family for however long it lasts. We grow with her and when it comes time to make the jump into the third act, Hung leaps ten years and in one shot Mui is a fully grown woman who still lives with her adopted family and still retains her childlike wonder. But things in the third act are all about upheaval: her employers cannot retain her anymore, having let the older servant go already, while the family slowly disintegrates due to a tragedy. So Mui must leave and go work for Khuyen (Vuong Hòa Hôi), a family friend of Trung, and it’s heartbreaking to see all the family despair at the loss of Mui, silently as their world comes to an end. But for Mui, working for Khuyen will trigger the most amazing of transformations.
While there are only around ten or so major characters in Scent…, the main star is the dual performances of Man San Lu and Tran Nu Yên-Khê as Mui. Both actors pull you in with what they don’t say or do, rather than what they do. They see the world at angles not sides. While others worry about money, the public view of the family or what they need to do to survive, Mui observes, comments when asked (she rarely is) and glides through her life. That’s not to say it’s all peaches and cream, because it’s not. She’s genuinely sad to leave La mere after becoming the daughter the older woman lost. But she evolves further as she spends more time with Khuyen as she articulates her wants and needs to herself and the wider world. Both actors carry the entire film on their performances alone even with the extra help from the cast and it’s sad that while Yên-Khê has gone on to other things (she later married the director and has been in most of his subsequent films), Lu has not. She was so assured for such a young performer that she made more seasoned child and teenager actors look bad.
The film sweeps along and its ending comes with the promise of renewal and self-discovery while at the same time, the closure of the family’s world and indeed the society of Vietnam as it existed then. We will never find out what happened to them after this but at least their world was vibrant and alive. Much like Mui, the experience was more important than its longevity. Scent of Green Papaya deserves your attention.