Review of Cyclo (1995) by Garry J — 17 Jan 2008

Finally I get to watch a Vietnamese film though this was obviously financed by the French art film companies. It mixes realism with surrealism which to my surprise worked really well. It treads a fine line between authenticity and pretension. Some scenes are of an authentic Vietnamese flavour whereas others are very obviously designed to appear exotic and oriental, for example, the numerous folk song scenes. The plot itself it fairly simple which is great because it works just fine. Some of the cinematography is amazing, especially that scene where the protagonist is high and starts wallowing in blue paint, with the ceiling light pulsating like a strobe light - otherwordly is the best way to describe it. It was like a scene from Tetsuo.

Overall, the film is good but not great, I suspect most of the praise is due to the fact that this was an arthouse film that came out of Vietnam and it was sufficiently arty enough to obtain merit in the festival circuits. It's not a bad movie, but let's be frank, it's not great. Still, I really hope to see much more from the Vietnamese cinema and what it has to offer.