The Scent of Green Papaya

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🎙️ EPISODE 302: 02.05.2021 *Review starts @ ~ 12:31 Shifting the language filter to ANY on the Random Movie Generator I've been using for this TRUE RANDOM series has really paid off. I've seen a handful of movies that I otherwise would have NEVER stopped to watch which have been true gems, not just good but GREAT works of cinema, and so I stop to thank the Gods of True Random. Because for every G.O.R.A. I must slog through, I get to watch something like this.

Similar to Blind Shaft, I will utilize the 10B score for this one. In both cases, I am hedging my bets in light of having not seen any of the filmmaker's other works. But at ANY MOMENT, a 10B can become a true, full-fledged 10A, a stone cold classic. You might be asleep when this happens, or at the gym, or getting your car's oil changed, or six feet in the damn earth, but such is the way things like this unfold. I work under cover of night with night being a stand-in for the passing of time, which is ruthless and unstoppable. Much like the "ten years later" time jump in The Scent of Green Papaya, the film I am reviewing right here and now.

This is a French film insomuch it was produced and filmed in that country, but it's completely in writer-director Tran Anh Hung's native language of Vietnamese. Although set in Vietnam, the Cannes Caméra d'Or prize-winner was shot entirely on a soundstage in Boulogne, France. This gives it an isolated, play-life appeal, structurally, but it's wonderfully weird soundtrack and tight sound design, blended with some lovely cinematography and understated performances make it feel much bigger as a whole. Tôn-Thất Tiết composed the avant-garde music, as well as the music for the other two films in Hung's "Vietnam Trilogy," and it's an impeccable and irreplaceable addition (similar to the intricate work of Jon Brion and Jonny Greenwood in PTA's filmography). The score is performative but not pandering; it helps tell the story as we travel with this young girl, Mui, from a life of chaos, servitude and scorn to one of love and peace (Man San Lu and Tran Nu Yên-Khê shine as Mui at ages 10 and 20, respectively). Later, when the wellknown melodies of Debussy are employed as score, it's a stark counterpoint, and one might think they were watching a completely different movie.

The Scent of Green Papaya is a meditative and nuanced film. When you see an 'early 90s life story' epic-type film, you think of a very particular kind of thing and this is not that. It's subtle and slow and beautiful, simple shots of fruit and animals–a little tiny house for her pet cricket was probably my favorite detail–and next to no melodrama. When it does breach that territory (its Debussified resolution, for example, is a bit cajoling) you forgive it because of HOW it's being presented: deliberate and real.

A tremendous first feature and I can't recommend it enough.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 302A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 303 ⫸

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