Thuy Linh: Let’s Not Just Go to the Movies, Let’s Make Them

With the explosion of blockbusters, a number of lackluster films has also emerged. What should be done with these underwhelming films? Thuy Linh examines the latest in Vietnamese cinema,  Nguyen Khac Huy’s Duong dua (The Race) and Ngo Quang Hai’s Hit: Hoang tu va Lo lem (Hit: The Prince and Cinderella), highlighting the flaws in each film and encouraging us to make films that avoid such blunders.

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A promotional image of teen romance Hit: Hoang tu va Lo lem (Hit: The Prince and Cinderella) directed by Ngo Quang Hai. Photo from the movie’s Facebook fan page
A promotional image of teen romance Hit: Hoang tu va Lo lem (Hit: The Prince and Cinderella) directed by Ngo Quang Hai. Photo from the movie’s Facebook fan page

It was with great anticipation that I went to see Nguyen Khac Huy’s first feature Duong dua (The Race), the next big action flick after Charlie Nguyen’s abortive Bui doi Cho Lon, which has been banned for good by the censors.

I had read good things about it from critics. They said the movie, whose cast and crew are all debutants – it is famous actress Hong Anh’s first movie as a producer, Australian-educated director Nguyen Khac Huy’s first feature film, and famous rock singer Pham Anh Khoa’s first leading role, among others – is fast-paced, thrilling, and surprisingly good.

I was disappointed; it wasn’t a good movie. It was incoherent, angry, fast-paced nonsense. There were lots of vague references to what may be real social issues: runners’ angst against their coaches and footballers, lack of appreciation for their sport and even the difficulty of the sport itself (what profession in the world is not difficult?!), gambling, human organ trade, rampant prostitution, traffic police corruption.

These references provide a dark social backdrop for the angry hero and other angry characters.

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The hero is a former runner turned truck driver who needs to repay the money he borrows to buy his truck. He is basically a good person who can become very angry when provoked. He hopes to earn the money by gambling. When this fails, he thinks about robbing a jewelry store.

But before he carries out the heist, he encounters an even angrier man who is running away from other angry gangsters with a mysterious bag.

There is another angry guy, the hero’s nemesis whom I should have mentioned earlier because he is the angriest of the lot and treats the hero’s family brutally to punish the hero for owing him money. But because the movie is so muddled I don’t know where to start.

This man runs a gambling and human-organ business. He is evil in a mean way. He doesn’t just threaten the hero viciously when the latter loses at gambling and owes him money, but even when he has money and will soon pay him, he has his men steal the money to force our guy to pay again.

As for the mysterious bag, we never know what is inside it, and the filmmakers promise at the end of the movie to reveal the mystery in a sequel.

But I hope, by that time, to have a film of my own to worry about. More about that later.

I’m more interested in another movie – Ngo Quang Hai’s teen (the heroine is 20, so she isn’t strictly a teenager) romance Hit: Hoang tu va Lo lem (Hit: The Prince and Cinderella).

It isn’t much better, but provides me with more meaningful material to discuss about the future development of Vietnamese cinema. After watching many contemporary Vietnamese movies, I have come to the conclusion that I can’t expect anything any more from the people currently in this business. It’s time everybody who is interested in cinema feels free to take action, write their own scripts, and find ways to make their own movies. They can’t be any worse than what I’m seeing.

Vietnamese cinema needs a group of energizing films that can point toward a direction and inspire diverse styles. At the moment most movies here too unrealistic and fluffy, if not boring, or downright incoherent.

The films I hope to see should feel real and coherent; if they can also be engaging, so much the better. They should not imitate foreign movies. If they remind somebody of foreign films, it should only be because human stories resonate across time and place, not because local filmmakers try to imitate others.

These future films should also be free from the old ways of looking at the world and making films, which include a patronizing attitude toward anything commercial.

There should be no distinction between entertainment and art. There should only be good movies.

This is where Hai’s latest movie comes in. In Hit: The Prince and Cinderella, which is about a girl who is dumped by her boyfriend, a musical manager, and later proves her emotional and professional independence by taking part in a singing contest without his help, Hai tries too hard to be teeny and commercial on the one hand, and serious and artistic on the other.

The movie creates a mythical world for its young characters: they listen to a hugely popular music program on the radio, are worked up because of a singing contest, and declare their love by texting. There is a sequence early in the film where it looks like everybody in Vietnam listens to this radio program when the heroine is dumped by her boyfriend.

I use the word “mythical” because Hai did his homework and learned from the global entertainment enterprise that you have to whip things up to a frenzy (think about the glitzy American Idol show that advertises itself by projecting itself as hugely popular, whether this popularity is real or imagined).

Hai’s world would be convincing if entertainment in Vietnam had reached such levels. But I don’t think it has, so the film looks fake and unoriginal. Even if it is indeed so popular, pop culture here doesn’t have to travel down the common route which will lead to a dead-end of creativity if it doesn’t re-invent itself.

But if Hai had been content with being teeny and commercial, and tried to tell a simple story about young people’s fluffy world, his movie would have been okay.

But no, he had to make it more sophisticated with torturous storytelling in which he cuts back and forth between the final singing contest and things that happen earlier.

He must have thought the repetitive images from the singing contest and amateurish use of a soundtrack which spills pieces of songs all over the place would help build the mythical sense of popularity of entertainment I mentioned earlier.

But for the heroine’s voice-over, which sounds too precocious for her fluffy world, the whole thing would have been incomprehensible. Late into the movie, a person who sat behind me in the cinema told his girlfriend, “Don’t understand what this film is about.”

To make a better teen movie, Hai should just relax, empty his mind, and plunge into the exciting world of youth, starting from the young people he knows, and tell their stories – simply and naturally as they happen.

I trust such stories will be a start for better things to come. If the young characters live in big cities, yes, there should be singing contests and incessant texting. But there are more things than that. There are the real, fascinating, unsolved conflicts between parents and children, boys and girls.

My 14-year-old niece and her boyfriend recently broke up. The reason for the break-up was that her mother caught her and her boyfriend chatting about sex on Facebook and pleaded with her to end the relationship.

Though it was the boy who initiated the dirty talk, my niece wasn’t shy about joking along, and this horrified my sister, who never thought her daughter could be so vulgar and knowledgeable about sex.

The girl, who is intelligent and obedient, listened to her mother and avoided the boy even though she still liked him. She liked him because he defended her when her schoolmates spoke ill of her. She was the best student in school and excited as much admiration as jealousy.

The boy felt rebuked and flirted with other girls. My niece became jealous and wanted to get him back. She talked to him again and invited him to her birthday party. He lied he was in the US and did not turn up.

One day he came out and said he had a new girlfriend and removed her name from his Facebook friends list. My niece sobbed to her mother one night, saying: “Mom, can you talk to him? Can you explain to him why I had to avoid him?”

My sister, who was relieved that the two broke up, comforted her daughter, telling her to let go, assuring her she would meet her perfect match, a better boy, who deserved her, some day. My niece asked, “What if I’ve met my perfect match and lost him?” To this, my sister didn’t know what to say. My niece is calmer now and has started to post wise and somewhat cynical observations about relationships on Facebook.

My niece’s story makes me feel that life is so full of interest, unanswered questions, and good stories that cinema should try to capture and share them with audiences.

I’m writing about it as a promise to myself that I must write good scripts and make good movies that my niece, her ex-boyfriend, and my sister can identify with. Because if I don’t at least try, and you don’t either, who is going to make good movies in Vietnam?

 

 

Thuy Linh lives and works in Hanoi. She graduated from UMass Boston with a BA in English and has a Certificate in Screenwriting from the Film Studies Program, a 10-month program of the Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities (in partnership with the Ford Foundation).

She is a translator/reporter/editor for various English newspapers in Hanoi and HCMC such as VietNamNet, Saigon Times, Sai Gon Giai Phong, and Tuoi Tre. At present, she works as a translator/editor for the “fiction” section (translates and edits contemporary Vietnamese short stories) and a film critic for Thanh Nien. This article originally appeared in Thanh Nien.

                                                                                                                                                              

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4 COMMENTS

  1. You should check out these supposedly 2 ghost classics of pre-1975 southern cinema: Lệ đá (1971, Võ Doãn Châu) and Con ma nhà họ Hứa (1973, Lê Hoàng Hoa). I’ll have to watch these films too. It may be easier for audiences abroad to find copies of these old movies. I know the story and have seen the southern-opera version of Con ma nhà họ Hứa. The story is very good and Vietnamese. Another horror classic (not ghost) from pre-1975 southern cinema I’ve seen is Giỡn mặt tử thần (1975, Đỗ Tiến Đức). These classics should be the inspiration for contemporary Vietnamese ghost/horror movies which are in general BAD. The story these days is not solid enough to make up for any imperfection in the more technical aspect (makeup, costumes, special effects, etc). Victory Vu has had some decent attempts with ghost films. The rest you can confidently ignore. Ghost/Horror is pretty an empty field now. Recently, I’ve read a script for a play by an aspiring writer. She adapts a ghost story in a classic of Vietnamese literature, 16th-century writer Nguyễn Dữ’s Truyền kỳ mạn lục – a collection of stories about ghosts, fairies, etc. which he rewrote based on existing folk stories from earlier times to reflect his century. I think it’s these rich literary sources that you should turn to. They might provide real inspiration and understanding of what is truly unique Vietnamese culture. In Vietnam now, critics talk a lot about the lack of real cultural inspiration for contemporary cinema. Filmmakers find it hard to build a sustained genre because of this. So folk and classical literature can be some help.

    • Dear Mr. Thuy Linh
      I read with great attention your reply where you talk about classic vietnamese horror film

      As I am a collector and researcher of horror and fantastic film from Asia (expecially from those – at least for us europeans – countries where there are still few informations online), I would like to know if you know more about the vietnamese production of horror-fantasy-fantastic-thriller-noir from the 50-80’s

      Because I am coming for a short trip to Vietnam next month and I’d like to find something … or just going straight to shops/market and know what I’d like to look for

      thank you
      Francesco

      • There is a version of Giỡn mặt tử thần on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUhqZfONh4.
        If you come to Hanoi, you may want to try to visit these places. They are some official film archive and library: The Vietnam Film Institute, 523 Kim Mã Street and The Centre for Assistance and Development of Movie Talents (TPD), 51 Tran Hung Dao Street. I don’t think these old films are available at DVD shops on the market in Hanoi. The old DVDs available here are mostly the war films made by the north.

  2. Hey, I am writing a Vietnamese Ghost story script. Can you name some good Vietnamese ghost films. I am not talking a horror. I mean good old spine tingling chills. Where can I do more research to create a truly unique Vietnamese Ghost story.

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