Three Seasons

The maturity of this young film maker was startling to me. The obviously gorgeous and varied visual feast for one's eyes combined with small subtlteties such as the nipple of the whore's breast showing through the pink nightgown that the cyclo driver gave her.. just a second.. but a revealing moment since all the clothes she dressed in as a whore never revealed her as much. Another example was in the story of the lotus flower girl and the leper.. the more she wrote his poetry the more his face appeared out of the shadows and became lit. The marriage of the visual and lighting movement reflecting the feelings of the characters is rare to see and something to be studied again in this film. And a moving performance by Keitel clearly searching for his humanity. And a perfect bit of casting with the woman who played his grown daughter. The director's sense of timing- not rushed, letting each story unfold, carrying one on the precarious wave of the confused mix of the country's old and the new, the thought provoking issues of the various different kinds of love portrayed..parental love,romantic love, poetic love, the love of beaty where it realy lies....all rare in film making today. Profoundly disturbing scenes of the street children. Nothing like this from a young American film makers that I've seen. And as a worldwide distributor of film, TV and video who tries to support new filmmakers I've seen a fair amount. I would like to know where the poetry came from and how to find it for myself to read and savor it even more.Bravo Tony Bui. Bravo Timothy Bui.

This film is sheer poetry! The three seasons are actually three vignettes, interpersonal connections which all touch the others in strange and moving ways. (Harvey Keitel is moving as a VietNam war vet who has returned to search for his Amerasian daughter.) The use of flowers and color as metaphor for the "opening" of VietNam after the war is truly striking. Don't miss this film.

There are not very many movies that can put the viewer into the trance that this one did. It left me wondering why more American films can't be made like this, with subtlety and an eye for simplistic beauty and peace in nature. The many scenes at night in the rain-soaked city only provide a stark contrast to the scenes with lotus flowers and singing, thus making them more effective and fresh. Above this, the characters were intriguing. None had a life even remotely like mine, and this is probably likewise for 99% of Americans, who live in a fast-track, needlessly complicated, and mostly material world. Materialism exists in Three Seasons, but is seen as the enemy (the plastic lotus flowers) or (in the case of the prostitute) something to overcome. I left the theatre feeling somewhat wistful that there are not more films like this being produced today.

i was not really into art films had not my anthro class required me to watch the film Three Seasons. Initial impression: Subtle, Asian version of Magnolia. Although Magnolia gave a hard stroke on American life and beauty by presenting brutish and twisted lives of different people, Three Seasons was softer and was more focused on redemption and search for contentment and happiness in life through a plain yet colorful lives of different Vietnamese and an American. The pictures were astonishing and moving--you feel what you see and it was such an enigma to evoke such essence of a story without flooding the whole of the movie with rhetorical lines and words. the enigma i felt was the same when i watched Magnolia but i think i love this movie more than it. Three Seasons did not have enough words but the pictures were really great. i personally love the song of Kien An and the petal shower before the story ends--they were so impressing. The biggest lesson i got in the story is that dreams somehow and someday will come true, our search for happiness and contentment will end in a different way we intended. i have to thank my anthro professor, i have to thank Three Seasons. ;-)

Please do yourself a favor and see this film. It is a beautiful and touching masterpiece. The film is set in a large city in modern day Vietnam. I believe it was Saigon. The film centers around the lives of several individuals. There is the ex-Marine (Harvey Keitel), hanging around an old GI bar (now a restaurant), hoping to find his daughter; The cyle taxi driver, who yearns to romance a local call girl; the flower girl who volunteers to write for a reclusive poet who lost his hands to leperacy; and the little boy who sells watches and cigarette lighters in hotels, bars, and the street. All these characters are weaved beautifully into the story like a boat moving slowly but surely up a river to a wonderful place. I have seen very very few movies in the past several years which qualify as true works of art. This movie is the real deal. .