emuir-1

Spoiler ahead: I found this hidden away on Tubi, and as I enjoy foreign language films, and noted that it was about an Asian opera company, I gave it a viewing. There are very, very few films where I reach the end and go right back to the beginning and watch again, but this is one. Although the main storyline and the Saigon setting are fascinating, the best part for me was the lengthy cai-luong opera scenes. Cai-luong is a VietNamese opera form similar to Peking Opera, but less traditionally rigid, similar to light opera compared with grand opera. The characterizations of everyone in the film was beautiful, and there was one sweet scene where the hardened debt collector met two little girls while waiting for their parents to come home with the money they owed. We saw the thug softening while entertaining the little girls. The gay romance was so subtle that it went right over my head, and I was not totally convinced it was anything more than the beginning of a friendship between youths who had more in common than they realised, and who were being changed by it, until I watched it again and realized that it wasn't obvious, but they had fallen for each other at first sight, and there were several clues in the subsequent dialog. SPOILER AHEAD: There was one scene which puzzled me, where young Dung was holding an immigration form, and Auntie Nga told him he was alone now, and asked how was he going to live, then asked what he wanted her to tell his mother, This suggested that his father had died, but that his mother was still alive. Youtube has several deleted scenes which show Dung's mother, who had remarried and moved to the US, coming back to visit but missing Dung. As he was working for Auntie Nga at that time, why did she not tell him his mother was visiting? Another deleted scene showed Auntie Nga speaking to Dung's mother and telling her that she had been forwarding the money to Dung and his father, but they had had a difficult time when the father became sick and had lost their home. Did Auntie Nga keep them from meeting as she had been keeping the money? Had Dung's mother tried to get him to the US but Auntie Nga told Dung the immigration had failed so he wouldn't find out about the money? I watched those scenes in the film several times but it still isn't clear to me.

However, I was not prepared for the sad ending, which on reflection, was inevitable.