Vietnam returns to the big screen at Switzerland's leading film festival
LOCARNO - After a seven-year absence, Vietnam has returned to the screens of Switzerland's prime film festival here as one of four Asian
contenders for this year's international trophy.
Film-maker Dang Nhat Minh presented "Mua Oi", "The Season of Guavas", to an appreciative audience of thousands at an
outdoor and balmy night-time screening in Locarno's cobbled Piazza Grande Thursday.
The movie tells a poignant tale of Hoa, a man in his fifties who has lost his mental faculties after falling as a child from a guava
tree in the garden of his family home.
Locked in his memories, he is obsessed with returning to the house which was expropriated by the state after the withdrawal of
the French army and then sold to a top civil servant.
With scenes slipping between present-day to memories of the past, Dang offers a gentle and touching portrayal of an innocent
who wants to return to his childhood, and a history of Vietnam since its independence.
Lamenting the loss of the "wisdom of childhood", the director who started out as a documentary maker in 1965 says "there is
no longer a place for innocence or spontaneity" in today's world.
After breaking in, Hoa who poses for students at Hanoi's art school, finally returns to live in the house after the daughter of its
present owner befriends him and allows him to stay, only to be interned in a psychiatric hospital once her father finds out.
From this moment, Hoa loses his memory and the guava tree is cut down.
After Asian films more or less swept the board at the Cannes Film Festival in May, four are lined up against a strong European
showing and one US offering for the international award here. Results will be announced Saturday.
Also competing for the category's Golden Leopard is the Japanese entry "Hotaru", a second feature by Naomi Kawase which
tells the tale of a young couple falling in love while facing up to personal losses.
Meanwhile, another film charting a slice of Asian history through a personal story is "Little Cheung", or "Xilu Xiang", by Hong
Kong's Fruit Chan.
Seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, Fruit Chan, who carried off the Special Jury Prize at Locarno in 1997 for "Made
in Hong Kong", turns his sights in his latest movie to the handover of the territory from Britain to China.
And "Feichang Xiari", or "A Lingering Face" by Chinese director Lu Xuechang provides the fourth Asian runner with a
portrayal of a young man's search for identity in modern day China.
Lu belongs to a group of directors considered anti-authoritarian and fiercely independent, whose work has been touched by the
events of 1989 when tanks rolled in to crush demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Set on the shores of Lake Maggiore in this stylish, southern Italian-speaking Swiss town, the Locarno Film Festival has a strong
reputation for offering a wide spectrum of movies in terms of both style and nationality.
But the international competition -- this year including 19 films from 15 countries -- tends to revolve around a combination of
'new' and 'young' cinema.
And the festival's massive 14 by 26-metre (46 by 86-foot) outdoor screen in its prized Piazza Grande flanked by pizzerias and
banks offers for many non-mainstream directors one of the few opportunities for their work to be watched by a mainstream
audience.
Agence France Presse - August 11, 2000.
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