Tony Bui's "Three Seasons" takes place in the teeming nightlife and the majestic hotels and the open marketplace and squalor of modern day Saigon. It is symbolically a film about traveling the historical past and present, put together in four uneven vignettes and how the lives of five people crisscross each other. Bui is not obtrusive and so his film is gentle and sweet and he lets his actors play out their roles with naturalness and grace. The gentleness of this film can be both its strength and weakness, because you leave thinking about discrete images beautifully photographed but you don't really have a sense of what Bui was trying to say. The image of sweat running down the face of cyclo drivers and the red abrasions on naked skin across the woman's back caused by a spoon are just two examples. Also, unlike Western soap opera, he isn't here to manipulate. Take the old man, Master Dao and his terribly scarred up face and amputations. Dao could have been afflicted by the after effects of napalm or a land mine explosion but, no, he has an old-fashioned affliction, leprosy. There is no post-Vietnam hate in Bui. The spirited cycle race through the streets of Saigon descends upon us without much buildup nor dramatics. We don't realize the significance of Hai winning this race till we see what he does with his winnings. Perhaps the few times Bui decides he needs to make an explicit statement, he does so with subtlety: the plastic lotus flowers which outsell the naturally grown ones, the opulent, newer hotels rising in Saigon turning the society into truly haves and have nots (what Bui calls the people of shadows), and the hardworking cyclo driver straining to move his vehicle as his Western couple occupants chatter oblivious to his struggles. The other weakness of "Three Seasons" is that the four vignettes are so interesting that each could have occupied the entire film. Instead we get incomplete servings from all four and a hunger to know more. Bui spends more time with the cyclo drive and the prostitute and the water lily girl and her poetic master. The story about the street smart little boy, who is forever in the rainy streets looking for his missing case of trinkets to sell and finding both the case and a tender companion in the end, could have stood by itself. Similarly, the Vietnam vet who comes back to find his lost daughter because he has to 'right a wrong' is a beautiful piece that needed more detail than what the film provided. The final scene of "Three Seasons" summarizes this film neatly - the falling crimson pedals from trees lining a boulevard. It is picturesque in its beauty but the meaning of it is more effervescent than lasting.
Review of Three Seasons
