Happy 58th Birthday, Trần Anh Hùng! Born today in 1962, this Vietnamese-born French screenwriter, producer and film director has a European arthouse aesthetic and philosophy which he applies to East Asian settings and characters.
This mixture sets up a dialogue between east and west in terms of representation in film, commerciality and art.
Born in Mỹ Tho, South Vietnam, Hùng, years later, following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, immigrated to France at age twelve.
While there, Hùng majored in philosophy at a university. By chance, he saw Robert Bresson's 1956 French black and white war/drama film 'Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut' ('A Man Escaped'). Afterwards, Hùng decided to study film instead.
Hùng later went on to study photography at the prestigious film school École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière (ENS Louis Lumiere Academy, which trains cinematographers.
For his graduation project in the late 1980s, Hùng wrote and directed the twenty-three-minute 1989 French short film 'Người thiếu phụ Nam Xương' ('The Married Woman of Nam Xuong').
The short had been inspired by 16th-century Vietnamese Han Tu poet Nguyễn Dữ's 1547 historical text Truyền kỳ mạn lục (Collection of Strange Tales) composed in Chữ Hán. This was in part a collection of legends.
Four years after 'A Married Woman of Nam Xuong', Hùng wrote and directed the 1993 Vietnamese/French drama/romance film 'Mùi đu đủ xanh' ('The Scent of Green Papaya').
Although set in Vietnam, the film was shot entirely on a soundstage in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The film was the first installment of Hùng's "Vietnam Trilogy".
Later that same year, 'The Scent of Green Papaya' won two top prizes at the 46th Cannes Film Festival in May.
The film was later acclaimed for its style for its beautiful images of Vietnamese life. It also co-stars Hùng's wife, Vietnamese-born French actress Trần Nữ Yên Khê.
To date, 'The Scent of Green Papaya' is the only representative of Vietnamese cinema to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. However, it didn't win. This occurred at the 66th Academy Awards in late March 1994.
Later that same month, Roger Ebert wrote of 'The Scent of Green Papaya': "Here is a film so placid and filled with sweetness that watching it is like listening to soothing music."
The success of 'The Scent of Green Papaya' helped Hùng gain funding for his next follow-up film and also the one of which he is best known for writing and directing.
This was the 1995 Vietnamese/French/Hong Kong drama/crime film 'Xích Lô' ('Cyclo').
Starring Hùng's wife, the film also features top Hong Kong actor and singer Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, credited as Poet. The film was the second installment of Hùng's "Vietnam Trilogy."
It tells of a nameless eighteen-year-old orphan (Lê Văn Lộc), who is only known by his profession of a cyclo (pedal-taxi) driver.
As he struggles on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, his vehicle is eventually stolen. Because of this, he is forced to pay it back.
Afterwards, he takes jobs from a local crime boss. However, he doesn't know that the crime boss is also his elder sister's (Trần Nữ Yên Khê) pimp.
'Cyclo' also tells about the hard lives of the labor force in early 1990s Ho Chi Minh City, and how people come under the influence of crime.
The film is considered hard to understand, due to the of abstracts and wordless communications. It was also the first to capture footage of Vietnam two decades post the war.
In a review later that same year, American journalist Janet Maslin, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times, asserted that this style, which is typical of the film director, makes the movie more memorable and successful.
'Cyclo' later won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Golden Lion (both Hùng) at the 52nd Venice International Film Festival. At the age of thirty-three, he was one of the youngest filmmakers to be thus honored there.
Having depicted life in Ho Chi Minh City, Hùng later turned his attention to his country's capital of Hanoi.
The following year, he was a member of jury at the 49th Cannes Film Festival in May 1996.
Four years later, Hùng wrote and directed the 2000 Vietnamese/French/German drama/romance film 'Mùa hè chiều thẳng đứng' ('The Vertical Ray of the Sun').
Starring his wife, the film was the third and final installment of Hùng's "Vietnam Trilogy".
The main characters of the film are three sisters who idolize their parents' family life, before the truth is revealed after the mother's death.
All three of Hùng's "Vietnam Trilogy" were written by Vietnamese-born French music composer Tôn-Thất Tiết.
According to his personal life, Hùng, along with his wife, have two children together.
According to Hùng's influences and style of filmmaking, his features are made so as to rebuild the image of Vietnam that he has lost when immigrating into France and to provide audience with another point of view on Vietnam while this topic has been long dominated by French and American cinema.
The stories are based on Hùng's knowledge about Vietnamese culture and (in the second and third films) his first-hand experience gained from trips to the country.
Hùng has been strongly influenced by French cinema and from some European and Japanese filmmakers, namely Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky and Yasujirō Ozu.
Hùng's style of filmmaking is expressed through the claim: "Art is the truth wearing a mask" (interview originally in Vietnamese).
He denies the conventional story-telling style and pursues making films with a new language: "to challenge the audiences' feelings, making them enjoy the films not with the critical reasoning but the language of the body".
As a banner of Vietnamese films, Hùng broke the image of poverty and backwardness in the past American and French films with his unique camera images, showing the audience a Vietnam where tenderness and cruelty coexist.
In Vietnam, Hùng's most famous three films, the "Vietnam Trilogy", expresses feelings for the motherland.
Hùng has been at the forefront of a wave of acclaimed overseas Vietnamese cinema over the past two decades.
His films have received international fame and acclaim, and his first three features were varied meditations on life in his home country of Vietnam.
Hùng has been active from 1989–present.
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