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Article: The Subtle Scent of `Papaya'
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- February 18, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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In "The Scent of Green Papaya," Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh
Hung's exquisite, inscrutable elegy for the lost country of his
birth, time is counted not in minutes or hours, but in human
measures - heartbeats and muffled prayers. Thrust into prominence as
the first official entry from Vietnam to earn an Oscar nomination
for Best Foreign Language Film, this is actually a placid, smallish
picture where almost nothing happens, a collection of symmetries and
delicate perceptions so subtly inflected that they register
somewhere beneath consciousness.
Tran has a story to tell, as well as a point to make about the
corrupting influence of French colonialism on the Vietnamese
culture, but he ...