AIDS on screen
She calls herself "Lolita Hoa." With a butterfly tattoo
peeking out from under her hot pants, the young,
heroin-addicted prostitute knows she's infected with
HIV, the virus that causes Aids. But that hasn't stopped
her from snaring clients in Ho Chi Minh City's garish
discos and going to the beach to trade gang sex for
drugs. "Last night alone I killed five guys," she boasts.
Such are the lives depicted in Bar Girls (Gai Nhay),
Vietnam's highest-grossing movie in more than a
decade. Zeroing in on the whisky-soaked, often brutal
nightlife of Vietnam's biggest city, Bar Girls is the first
local film to highlight the HIV/Aids crisis.
But it's more than just an Aids movie. Bar Girls has
won praise for its realistic dialogue, fast-paced editing,
and humane portrayal of drug addicts and
prostitutes--who typically appear more like cardboard
cutouts in the government's plodding campaigns against
"social evils" (a code word for everything from gambling
to prostitution). In Bar Girls, the characters hail from
both rich and poor families, and speak of what it's like
to be trapped by pimps and to deal with social
indifference.
"This is more effective than reports, seminars and
leaflets," says one official at the state board to combat
Aids. But in a country with more than 59,000 known
HIV carriers (the real figure is believed to be much
higher) and an official Aids death toll of 4,889, some
activists accuse the film of ghettoizing Aids by giving the
impression that it only strikes prostitutes and
drug-takers. "The fact is that everybody can get HIV,"
says Tran Duc Hoa, a project officer for Care
International in Hanoi. "People may think, 'I'm not
involved in 'social evils,' so there's no risk'."
And don't expect to see any condoms on screen, even
though state-run television airs plenty of condom ads
and the country is blanketed with billboards featuring
dancing condom caricatures. Bar Girls goes heavy on
horror but says nothing about prevention. Explains
47-year-old director Le Hoang: "I want people to
become aware of the dangers of HIV, then they have to
find their own way to protect themselves."
By Margot Cohen - The Far Eastern Economic Review - March 20, 2003.
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