Time Heals
A Vietnamese drama, set in Hanoi, offers a rare glimpse.



THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN
Written and directed by Tran Anh Hung

TAKING A PAGE OR TWO from Chekhov, and then giving them their own context, Tran Anh Hung’s coolly evocative new movie, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, spends time with three Hanoi sisters and the men they love in their patriarchal culture. But while Tran, who made The Scent of Green Papaya, quietly tells us that women are stronger men, his observation comes with no judgment, and his men are far from the tyrants.

Big sister Suong has a husband, Quôc, a photographer with a country lover and a child. But Suong doesn’t complain because she herself has a man whom she meets occasionally for silent trysts where she forbids either of them to speak. Middle sister Khanh is married to Kiên, a writer, who may or may not have fooled around on a long night when he went off by himself to complete his novel. They have a very tender relationship, and now Khanh is pregnant, although she finds herself wondering what it would be like to sleep with someone else.

Youngest sister Liên (portrayed by the director’s wife, Tran Nu Yên-Khê) lives with their brother Hai, an actor who works out every morning while listening to somber American ballads by the likes of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. Liên - who hopes to marry some day, and who’s unbelievably naïve about how babies are made - is mad about her brother and likes knowing that people think of them as a couple, although nothing untoward happens between them, even when she crawls into his bed at night.

Their situations unfold at a leisurely pace in Tran’s intimate drama, which explores sensation and introspection more than dramatic cause and effect. Tran’s camera studies the faces and behaviors of his characters, and at times his movie takes on the feel of a European art film. (In fact, although born in Vietnam, Tran was largely raised and educated in France.) He pursues them with a moaning, dissonant, symphonic score that further conveys their troubled states of mind.

And yet, The Vertical Ray of the Sun is not an oppressive drama or an especially sad one. As we meet the three sisters, they’re planning a memorial to mark their mother’s death. But when one sister finally asks why they never celebrated their parents’ birthdays when they were alive, another sister says that’s just how things are - and the movie abruptly ends.

All we can really take from this jarring conclusion is that - at least from Tran’s point of view - Vietnamese culture balances life and death in the most casual ways, and that a celebration of one need not preclude a recognition of the other. He often reinforces this yin and yang, and he clearly wants to put rituals on display: a hand-washing for one couple becomes the proper moment to reveal a pregnancy, and mealtimes find the men relaxing with drink as the women laugh about how they have to do all of their country’s dirty work.

Meanwhile, around the periphery of the drama, we see rainstorms and cafés, pot-bellied pigs and houses that float. Filmed in Hanoi, in a variety of tones that range from brilliantly sunlit to more dusky and ominous, The Vertical Ray of the Sun offers interesting glimpses of Vietnam for the homebound traveler. It’s all sad and lovely, with no villains or saints, just everyday people trying to balance what comes their way.