The film begins in 1951 with the arrival of Mui, age 10, at the Saigon estate of her new employers, an extended family of mother, father, three sons and a grandmother in a state of perpetual mourning who rarely leaves her upstairs room.
Under the tutelage of an older servant Thi (Nguyen Anh Hoa), Mui learns the daily tasks necessary to run the household; cooking family meals, polishing her mistress's beloved vase collection, washing the floors and contending with the family's demonic smallest son, a hellion who delights in tormenting Mui by urinating in his mother's vases or frightening Mui with a lizard tied to a stick. Though they live in a small building set apart from the main home, the servants are a part of the family, and none more so than Mui who reminds her mistress of the daughter she lost seven years ago. Even when Mui commits the worst infraction and breaks one of her mistress's prized vases, the Mother (Truong Thi Loc) simply pats her on the head and tells her not to worry. It is clear in the wake of her child's death and another soon-to-be-revealed family trauma, the material world is of far less consequence.
Mui's view of the world is that of an astute, enchanted observer utterly open to the tiny dramas of ants, elderly old men, dripping papaya fruit and frogs unfolding all around her, and also the dramas that unfold within Mui's dysfunctional family of employers. She is transfixed by milky fruit sap dripping onto a bright green leaf or the delightful surprise of cutting into a papaya to see a whole universe of exquisite white seeds within. Mui consumes the world with her eyes, reveling in its beauty. Her behavior is contrasted with that of the more decadent aristocrats she cares for, including the family's middle son who kills ants in hot wax for pleasure. Despite their appearance of outward calm, the family is deeply troubled by economic and also psychological instability. They depend upon a small sewing shop in the bustling commercial area for money and are made even more vulnerable by the Father's (Tran Ngoc Trung) habit of regularly disappearing with the family's finances which he wastes on women and gambling.
The world of Tran Anh Hung's film is something of a closed world, with much of the drama unfolding within the confines of the family compound. The sense of a world apart in antebellum Vietnam is intensified by the fact that The Scent of Green Papaya was shot entirely on a soundstage outside of Paris because of budgetary restrictions. The emphasis on the domestic sphere and the jewel-box, enclosed sets brings to mind directors like classical melodrama scion Douglas Sirk who also focused on the inherent drama in human relations and the complex psychology of families. Because as much as she is a servant, Mui is also an integral part of her employers' lives, especially for the mother, who begins to see her as a daughter. Ten years pass and in the film's second act Mui has grown into a 20-year-old woman played by Tran Nu Yen-Khe. But a lack of money means Mui must leave her substitute mother in the film's most heart-wrenching scene, and go to work for a wealthy young composer and friend of the family. Since childhood Mui has harbored a crush on the handsome Khuyen (Vuong Hoa Hoi) who is now embroiled in an exciting affair with an aristocratic young woman of his own class. But as the action unfolds, Khuyen becomes more and more distracted by the beauty and innocence of his housekeeper.
Utterly transportive for its gentle insights and delicate view of the world, The Scent of Green Papaya develops at its own pace, according to Tran Anh Hung's enchanted view of a world marred by human sadness, but alive to the wonder of nature and the physical beauty of the world.
Writing in The Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum quoted director Tran Anh Hung as saying "In The Scent of Green Papaya, I wanted to show the regular life of the Vietnamese people. I wanted to show their humanity, which hasn't been seen yet at the movies." He also notes that the film "was born from the images I have of my mother, the freshness and the beauty of my mother's gestures." Tran was born in Vietnam in 1962 and moved to Paris in 1975. His potent film, with its artificial sound stage recreation of Vietnam, allows the country to occupy a place more defined by myth and memory than actual experience, a fitting and lyrical treatment for an expatriot, evoking the long-ago place of his birth.
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by Felicia Feaster
