The Story: Three sisters, young Lien, Suong, and Khanh are a close knit family, supportive of each other since their parents death, gathering together the family every year on the anniversary of their mothers death. They run a small restaurant and work together. All are married, except for Lien, who lives with their brother, Hai, in a very close (too close?) bond. And, it is the married sisters who must deal with growing concerns of infidelity with their spouses, Khanh with writer husband Kien and Suong with photographer husband Quoc. Yet, there is an odd balance in their lives despite this, their familial acceptance, their way of being, thier roots strong enough to keep their seemingly harmonious world from completely falling apart.

The Film: With Vertical Ray of the Sun (aka. At the Height of Summer, 2000) and his two previous features The Scent of Green Papaya and Cyclo, Tran Ahh Hung creates another subtle film, so far showing himself to be a delicate storyteller and weaver of images. If I were to describe the kind of films he makes, I guess I would say, he makes "anti-explosion films". That is, his films are mainly just about people simply going about their everyday lives. While there is turmoil, it isn't really melodramatic at all; his films are more interested in lounging around, observing normal behavior, smoking, waking up, preparing a meal, instead of loud, emotional confrontations. Whereas most drama will want to pound home some intense emotional scene, Tran Ahh Hung realizes, that quite often, that just is not how life is, and such drama can just be just as easily conveyed with a simple shot of a man floating in water, three sisters giggling, a silent meeting between two people having a tryst, or a wifes brief tearful acceptance of a husbands double life. In that sense, he reminds me a lot of Ingmar Bergman, Bresson or Ozu, men who could convey emotion just by beautifully framing and expertly directing their actors, with little need for spoken confrontation or spelling every emotion out with words... Probably the two best scenes of the film are- Lien and Hai waking up, going through their morning routine as Lou Reed/The Velvet Undergrounds "Pale Blue Eyes" plays in the background, Hai works out while Lien (innocently?) teases him about how everyone thinks they are a couple instead of brother and sister- and as writer Kien lazily putters around, he walks out to the garden where his wife, middle sister Khanh, is singing, and the two just lovingly gaze at each other before Khanh reveals a secret she has been keeping... But, the simplicity and starkness that is also the films downfall. Ultimately, with so much subdued, simple scenes, and emphasis on image, the characters are lacking and there is no real climatic sense of anything coming to a boil. The film is completely lacking in tension, and while beautiful to look at, and having so many wonderfully composed scenes, it is also a little cold.

So, it is a film about resignation, family history, family bonds, told in a very low key style. It is a nice distraction, an antidote to the "movie of the week" kind of dramas that plague most US screens (no mother dying of a terminal disease bunk). While it is a bit romanticized wiht the dreamy, cool Hanoi setting and artistic occupations of the two husbands, it isn't often that films approach infidelity in such a way, with the characters not putting up a wall, falling apart in the face of betrayal, but kowtowing to it in order to keep their families together.

The DVD: Columbia/Tristar Studios, great transfer, but bare when it comes to extras.

Picture- Widescreen anamorphic – Very good with the cinematography and lushness of the Hanoi setting very well represented. Strong colors, pretty vivid through and through, with some minor dropoff in sharpness in a few scenes.

Sound- Vietnamese (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround). Once again excellent although this is not a soundtrack of booming fx but one of simple little details, background noise, and mellow Lou Reed songs playing on lazy mornings.

Extras- 24 Chapters- Film Trailer- Filmographies for Tran Ahh Hung and his wife Tran Nu Yên-Khê, who played Lien, but its pretty simple- Vertical Ray of the Sun, The Scent of Green Papaya and Cyclo.