What I love about this film is that it presents the country-Vietnam- in all its glory, warts and all, and makes it a thing of beauty, even when the subject matter is an unscripted night game of pickup street soccer in a poor section of the city. In the rain. The photography and composition are masterful, the pacing is languid, the script is minimal, and what's on screen looks absolutely authentic. It looks as if it were filmed completely on location in Saigon, without sets. Each of the four stories (The American, Woody, Lan, and Teacher Dao) is resolved in a way that it would be resolved only in Vietnam, and the strongest story (in my humble), the story of the dying teacher and the flower-seller, could have taken place centuries ago. I think the film does a great job of showing the viewer layers of Vietnamese culture, of which The American's story, although just as gut-wrenching as the others, is only the latest.
Review of Three Seasons
