a film by Tràn Anh Hung
On the anniversary of their mother's death, three sisters in contemporary Vietnam meet to prepare a memorial banquet. Intensely close, they tell each other everything and seek each other's advice on every subject, and yet each has a secret. By the end of a turbulent period of temptations, disappointments, suspicions, separations and misunderstandings, each of them will have revealed what the tact and discretion of familial relationship has always kept hidden. The story, spatially framed by anniversaries, is set within a single month starting with the family preparing the anniversary meal in honour of their departed mother and concluding just before a similar event is about to take place in memory of their father.
It is high summer and the atmosphere is languid. The three sisters run the Café Thùy Dương, situated in a luxuriant and elegant district of old Hanoi, populated by artists and intellectuals. Youngest sister Liên slowly awakens in the apartment she shares with her brother Hai. She enjoys an emotional and physical closeness with him, allowing other people to think they are a couple. Hai is uncomfortable with this and gently discourages his little sister's display of affection. However, each morning he awakes to find Liên sleeping in his bed. At their mother's memorial gathering the sisters discuss their parents' marriage and the possibility of their mother's infidelity with a fellow student but are unwilling to admit that their parents' relationship could have been less than ideal. During the month that follows each sister's hidden relationship problems and fears are gradually revealed.
Suong, the eldest sister, is married to Quôc, a botanical photographer and they have a child, Little Mouse. Since her miscarriage four years before, Quôc has led a double life, supposedly in secret, with another woman and their young son in the remote Ha Long Bay. When he is away from her with his second family, Suong seeks refuge in an affair with Tuân. Each suffers the guilt and remorse that comes from their need to feel loved and wanted. Middle sister Khanh's husband, Kiên, is a writer struggling to finish his first novel through which he expresses his fantasies about having an affair. When Khanh tells him that she is pregnant he almost betrays her in a Saigon hotel but she believes that he has been unfaithful. Liên, also with relationship problems, is naive about sexuality and biology and whilst embracing the idea that she is pregnant after sleeping with a boyfriend just once, she continues to flirt with her brother Hai.
The film tells the stories of three women in different stages of life. The young, emotionally immature girl, who lives in a fantasy world and is beginning to explore her sexuality. Her older sister, who is married and trying to have a child, whilst worrying about her husband and the larger family. And the eldest sister, who has faced much more and looks for solutions in life that work. As the three women struggle with life on different levels, they share their problems, offering help and support to each other as an opportunity for forgiveness and growth rather than confrontation. During what becomes a pivotal month in their lives, the three sisters and their brother are forced to face the nature of their relationships.
Writer and director Tràn Anh Hung comments on the imagery of his film: "The images in the film have no documentary substance, nor do they depict the present as experienced by the characters. Rather, they are incessantly repeated images, burnished into the characters' consciousnesses. Images that the characters will keep, like secrets or recall like memories of harmony. The harmony they convey has a particular beauty, a beauty tainted by bitterness and melancholy."
Exquisitely acted and photographed, this sensuous and visually rich film is an elegant and resonant combination of mood, ravishing visuals and music, detailing and reflecting upon the everyday moments in life as pure cinematic poetry.
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