Bride of Silence
Directed by Doan Minh Phuong and Doan Thanh Nghia
Melbourne Film Festival, July 20-August 5
REVIEW BY BRENDAN DOYLE
Ten years in the making, Bride of Silence, which screened recently to full houses at the Sydney Film Festival, is an intriguing, ambitious debut feature that has been described by the Far Eastern Economic Review as "the first Vietnamese feminist film".
Set in a poor village in northern Vietnam about 200 years ago, it tells the story of Ly An, a young woman who refuses to reveal the name of the father of her unborn child to a village council meeting, and must suffer the consequences. It is also the story of her son's epic journey to find out the truth about his mother.
As the film opens, Hien, her 17-year-old son, asks his dying foster father Tuy to finally tell him about his mother. As Tuy speaks, we see in flashback Ly An refusing to name the father to the village chief. She has committed the ultimate offence to the community's moral code. The elders order her head to be shaved and her baby set adrift on the river and left to the mercy of the gods.
But Tuy dies before finishing his story. Hien then goes on the road to learn the truth. In a visually striking sequence at night by a lake, he watches a performance by a troupe of travelling musicians and becomes enamoured of the beautiful singer. This romantic interlude, however, is not part of the main story, and Hien leaves the troupe to go on with his search. He is told different stories about his mother's fate, and each is shown on screen with compelling, often extravagant imagery.
Hien finally learns the truth. Three friends, all woodcarvers, had rescued Ly An and the child from prison and escaped by boat. Living in a remote house on a river, the three men and Ly An live an idyllic life together for a time, quite outside the bounds of conventional morality, until jealousy wreaks havoc and Ly An is again forced to flee with her child.
The lush visual imagery, aided by traditional Vietnamese music and some JS Bach, evokes powerful mythical elements related to water and earth. Certain extreme close-ups reminded me of The Scent of Green Papaya, but without the luxury of indoor lighting, which often results in a dark, grainy quality to many of the shots.
Truong Ngoc Anh is a beautiful and convincing Ly An. The rest of the cast are first-time actors, and the director has made superb use of their natural abilities. However, the story was not always easy to follow, possibly because of the over-use of flashbacks.
Director Doan Minh Phuong, writing about the theme of this intensely personal film, points out that in that society of 200 years ago, "nothing could have salvaged the honour of women who became pregnant without a husband. The young woman in our film knows that her life is owned by others, but she mysteriously finds her own sense of independence. There's a place in her mind where no-one can trespass ... We wanted to unfold the strength of Ly An's character through the impressions of her wandering son. It's a film about a woman's freedom, and it begins in loneliness, with silence."
Although the treatment of the story I found at times confusing, the overall impact is undeniable, given the film's epic dimension and powerful emotional qualities. The director takes us on a strange journey in an alien but very human world.
Directors Doan Minh Phuong and Doan Thanh Nghia are sister and brother, born in Saigon. Their childhood and youth were marked by war. When it ended, Phuong went to Germany and Nghia to the US. Returning to Vietnam in the early 1990s, they spent 10 years researching the film.
The outstanding achievement of Bride of Silence bodes well for the future of film-making in Vietnam.
From Green Left Weekly, July 13, 2005.
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