VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnamese film “Canh Dong Bat Tan” (Floating Lives) screened at the 15th Pusan International Film Festival to end today is described by The Hollywood Reporter as a sensuous and timeless film on love, loss and yearning.

Dustin Nguyen in "Floating Life"

At www.hollywoodreporter.com, it writes “an elegiac, lyrical tale of a nomadic Vietnamese family whose lives are changed when they take in a prostitute”.

"Floating Lives" -- to be screened across Vietnam as of October 22 -- is a model of solid, old-fashioned filmmaking, “first and foremost a sensual experience of breathtaking scenery that also reflects the story’s shifting moods, the film is constantly gentle flowing movement, like the Mekong River that is the soul of the story, as well as a metaphor for the characters’ lives.”

Adapted from the novel "Boundless Rice Field" by Nguyen Thi Ngoc Tu, the film which takes place in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam at the height of the bird flu epidemic, tells of timeless universal themes of love and cruelty,.

A prostitute, Suong, enters a household of a father, son and daughter after being severely raped and beaten by a local mob.

Just like the lotus flower which can grow strong and pure out of murky dirty water, Suong elicits an array of human passions among the members of her host family from lust to maternal love and excruciating despair.

The poetic, at time vicious, symbolism in the movie is skillfully planned and artistically delivered.

Vo (Dustin Nguyen), daughter Nuong and son Dien rear ducks and live on a boat. They drift from one rice field to the next just as their tumultuous lives seem to be floating adrift and their inner struggles remain in perpetual motion.

Following are excerpts of the story published on the website.

"Floating Lives" belongs to a recent wave of beautifully lensed, tastefully erotic Vietnamese films (like "Adrift" and "Bi, Don’t Be Afraid") that are gaining visibility in festivals. Nguyen Phan Quang Binh’s narrative grammar is more traditional and coherent.

Despite its lush setting and literary roots, the representation of human cruelty and depravity is quite unsettling. The government order for mass killing of ducks further intimates an atmosphere of catastrophe and the harshness of survival.



None of this compares with the piercing, relentless representation of Vo’s psychological cruelty to his children and to Suong.

Through him, one not only learns how bitterness and the refusal to forgive destroy any capacity for love or joy, one also sees the devastating effects it has on those around him.

The characters’ grueling experiences and the director’s occasional heaviness in handling the drama are alleviated by the dreamlike landscape of lotus fields and billowing reeds. They exist not just as an aesthetic adornment but remind one that beauty exists, and happiness is still possible, as the moving ending manifests.



Gruffly handsome Nguyen makes his grunts and sighs convey the pain of someone who still desires women physically but hates them for making him feel that way. Other performances are equally penetrating. Yen lifts her role from the cliche of the hooker with a heart of gold by revealing a Jezebel streak that makes her a foil for Vo’s wife.

Source: Tuoi Tre