Weary of war
The sacrificial heroine is one of the archetypes of Vietnamese cinema, whose origins can be traced back to Kim Vân Kiều, the great classic of Vietnamese literature. Not surprisingly, the first surviving film - no copy, alas - is a 1924 adaptation. "The jealous blue sky has a habit of striving against the destiny of rosy cheeks" says this long poem, an apt description of the calamities that were to befall Vietnam. The Japanese invasion, followed by a war of independence with the French colonial power, were not conducive to the development of a film industry. Newsreels, propaganda films cobbled together in a hurry, such as La Victoire de Môc Hoa (1948) about the rout of a French operation, made up the bulk of this production. Soviet director Roman Karmanen produced a very special type of documentary with Viêt Nam, Sur la voie de la victoire (1954), a re-enactment of the battle of Diên Biên Phu, made during the rare respite afforded by the war. Pierre Schoendoerffer, who was taken prisoner there, shot the first of his many films about the conflict in Cambodia, La 317e section (1965). Two Western productions shot in Saigon stood out at the same time, both for cinematographic and political reasons: Mort en fraude (Marcel Camus, 1957), the story of a smuggler who takes up the cause of independence, was one of the few anti-colonial films of the period, and was censored in the overseas territories even though the last French soldiers had not yet left Saigon. Two years later, A Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1958) distorted Graham Greene's original spy novel to serve an anti-communist discourse forged by the CIA, foreshadowing the Vietnam War. In the North as in the South, fiction cinema, alongside the flood of war documentaries exalting Vietminh victories, was experiencing its first stirrings: Sur les rives opposées du même fleuve (Pham Ky Nam, 1959) mourns, through a tragic love story, an impossible reunification after the country was divided in two in 1954. A few years later, one of the first major Vietnamese productions, Le 17e Parallèle jour et nuit (Hải Ninh, 1972) delved deeper into this motif where love and politics are inextricably intertwined. This timid brightening, witnessed by Le Petit Oiseau (Trần Vũ, 1962), La Jeune Femme de Bãi Sao (Phạm Kỳ Nam, 1963), or Le Vent se lève, (Huy Thành, 1966) would be short-lived, interrupted by the massive deployment of the American army in the south of the country. In any case, the recurring motifs that would tirelessly run through Vietnamese cinema were already well established: feminine stoicism and devotion, the bucolic panorama of rural life, the trauma of war.This is the Vietnam War, a conflict whose nightmarish nature is abundantly recounted by American cinema(Journey to the Edge of Hell, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon to name but the most famous), but in which the Vietminh forces are more often than not seen as an invisible threat. On the other side of the mirror, a documentary made under American bombardment in the vicinity of the village of Vinh Linh, Le 17e Parallèle, (Joris & Marceline Loridan Ivens, 1968) offers another perspective. "They destroyed everything. The rice was so beautiful. The tanks destroyed everything", we hear from one of the villagers in this impressive testimony. In the meantime, a number of films enjoyed great success in the South, but were irremediably viewed with suspicion by the reunified state of 1975.
A long transition
At the end of the war, the radical line taken by the Communist regime, a disastrous economic situation and new border conflicts led to the flight of the boat people, a humanitarian catastrophe poignantly recounted in Boat People (1983) by Hong Kong director Ann Hui. A true Vietnamese cinema was nevertheless in its infancy, an expression that perhaps does not do justice to the formal brilliance of Quand viendra le 10e mois (1984), a painful and stoic portrait of a young widow. But it was the country's economic opening, consecrated by the Doi moi, or Renewal, in 1986, that finally marked a decisive turning point. Dang Nhat Minh's La Fille de la rivière (River Girl ) (1987) made Minh the guiding light of this nascent Vietnamese cinema, and achieved the feat of being both awarded and banned in his own country. Also censored was Troupe de cirque ambulant (1992) by Việt Linh, another important name in Vietnamese cinema, who went on to make L'Immeuble (1999) and Il fut un temps (2002), a twilight tale of a disappearing Vietnam in the early 20th century. An intimate chronicle of rural life, as its title suggests, Nostalgie de la campagne (Dang Nhat Minh, 1995) offers a picture that contrasts with the gritty satire of Les Coupeurs de bois (Vuong Duc, 1999). A striking coincidence and a sign of the country's openness, two French directors, Jean-Jacques Annaud and Régis Wargnier, came to Vietnam to shoot films released in 1992 that revisit its colonial past. L'Amant, adapted from the novel by Marguerite Duras, focuses on the colonial vestiges of Saigon, which has changed a great deal since then, whileIndochine, a romantic fresco that unfolds almost thirty years of history, capitalizes on the splendor of the junk-strewn Bay of Along, the Imperial City of Hué and the Red River delta. These films present a heady, fantastical vision of an old-fashioned Vietnam, not exempt, of necessity, from a certain form of colonial nostalgia. Vietnam owes its international breakthrough to expatriate filmmakers, known as Viet Kieu. For example, the award-winning L'Odeur de la papaye verte (Tran Anh Hung, 1993) was shot entirely in studios near Paris, where a 1950s Saigon alleyway was recreated. The French-Vietnamese director returned to his homeland to shoot, first in Saigon, Cyclo (1995), an urban crime thriller - almost a first, then in Hanoi for À la verticale de l'été (2000), a serene family chronicle, both equally polished. Three Seasons (Tony Buy, 1999) interweaves several stories, including that of an American veteran returning to Saigon to find the daughter he left behind. Co-produced by an American production company - a first since the end of the war - it marks a symbolic reconciliation between the two countries.Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo, a rare filmmaker who, like Bui, came from the United States, has produced one of the decade's outstanding films, Gardien de buffles (2004), a pastoral epic set in splendid aquatic landscapes.
Profuse promises
In the same year, Lê Hoàng's Filles de bar launched a wave of films that explored the shadows of Saigon's megalopolis with unprecedented frankness, indicating that censorship was loosening. It also signals the advent of commercial cinema, where the genre is finally thriving. Truc Charlie Nguyen is a specialist in the genre, with Le sang des héros (2006), a large-scale historical fresco, and Fool for Love (2010), a respectable attempt at a romantic comedy that shows a Vietnamese diaspora finally willing to return to its own country to pursue its dreams - in this case, to become a successful singer for the heroine. Ngô Thanh Vân, who has returned from Norway, is one of the incarnations of this dream in reality, and the muse of this commercially-oriented cinema: musical(Saigon Love Story, Ringo Le, 2006), action film(Clash, Le Thanh Son, 2009), she is, along with Johnny Tri Nguyen, with whom she shares the bill on several occasions, the great Vietnamese star of recent years. The prolific Victor Vu is one of today's main purveyors of mainstream cinema, alternating between big-budget epics(Blood Letter, 2012), adaptations of children's literature hits(Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass, 2015), horror and the list goes on. The films that make it to our screens are of a different genre, generally intimate and visually polished, such as Vertiges (Bui Thac Chuyen, 2009), which traces a young woman's awakening to sexuality, Au fil de l'eau (Phan Quang Binh Nguyen, 2010), which follows a family living isolated on a boat among the labyrinth of canals of the Mekong Delta, or Phan Dang Di's films like Bi, n'aie pas peur! (2010) about a family in Hanoi whose ties have become frayed, or Mekong Stories (Phan Dang Di, 2015) about the bright illusions of youth at the dawn of the 20th century - and its disappointments. Lost in Paradise (Ngoc Dang Vu, 2011) also paints a picture of Saigon, its out-of-touch youth and those left behind, through the story of a young homosexual forced to prostitute himself in order to survive. After a long absence, Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo made a comeback with a minimalist science-fiction film, 2030 (2014), which imagines a Vietnam invaded by water against a backdrop of climate crisis. The Third Wife (Ash Mayfair, 2019) follows in this ultra-classical vein, highlighting the beauty of the surrounding natural environment, which contrasts with the violence of the patriarchal traditions inflicted on its heroine. Whether blockbusters(Kong: Skull Island, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017) or more modest films that look back at the Indochina War through the lens of hallucinatory reverie à la Apocalypse Now(Les Confins du monde, Guillaume Nicloux, 2018), there's no doubt that Vietnam is once again becoming a haven for foreign filmmakers and locals alike. In 2023, Tran Anh Hung returns with his latest film, La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (2023), which won the Prix de la mise en scène at Cannes, thirty years after the director's first laurels on the Croisette.
