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Outsider and insider views of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City: The Lover/L'Amant, Cyclo/Xích lô, Collective Flat/Chung c and Bargirls/Gái nh y
Author(s) -
Do Tess,
Tarr Carrie
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
singapore journal of tropical geography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9493
pISSN - 0129-7619
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9493.2008.00319.x
Subject(s) - film director , vietnamese , ho chi minh , insider , orientalism , narrative , history , politics , humanities , art , sociology , movie theater , art history , geography , literature , political science , cartography , law , philosophy , linguistics , scale (ratio)
This article addresses representations of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in four films made since ? i m i , the opening up of Vietnam to western influences, initiated in 1986. The Lover/L'Amant (1992) is a Franco‐British heritage film which reconstructs the city from a Eurocentric neocolonial perspective, while Cyclo/Xích lô (1995), a French‐funded film made by a France‐based Vietnamese filmmaker, is a contemporary poetic thriller which treats the city expressively as the site of present‐day corruption and violence. The nostalgia evident in these two ‘outsider’ films is contrasted with the more complex views of the city in two state‐funded low‐budget ‘insider’ films by local Vietnamese filmmakers, Collective Flat/Chung c (1999) and Bargirls/Gái nh y (2003); the first, an intellectual fable set in the decade or so following reunification/Independence in 1975 which recalls an attempt at collective living, the second, a hugely popular treatment of contemporary urban realities, both corrupt and progressive. Examining how the mise‐en‐scène and narratives of the city differ from film to film, the essay takes the representation of the city through changing historical, political, social and economic times, from colonial‐orientalist Saigon to corrupt, capitalist Ho Chi Minh City via the slow degeneration of the postwar socialist/collectivist experiment. In so doing, it confirms the importance of the films' moments and contexts of production in the construction of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City as a cinematic ‘city‐text’.