i saw the trailer for this in 2019 and i thought, great, another movies catered to the male gooners! now, after 5 years, an edit on tiktok (!) has convinced me to give it a try, and i'm glad i did. very stunning cinematography, and a decent incoporation of vietnamese folk songs. i'm not an expert, so i don't know how historically accurate the costumes are, but i can tell a lot of effort went into it. the film was an attempt to raise awareness about a very important (and surprisingly, often forgotten) subject that is vietnamese women in ancient times. i don't understand why it was banned from screening, when a lot of other films featuring sex scenes passed the censorship. the film was definitely not subtle on terms of meaning and metaphors - i feel like those caterpillars and butterflies were screaming the whole time: "look at me! understand what i'm implying!". the acting does fall short in a lot of scenes (also, what's up with the super monotonous, foreign accent? is that supposed to be how people used to talk?), and the film doesn't elicit as much emotions - disgust, horror, empathy,.. as it should, since this is such a heavy topic. the chicken-killing scene feels to still and stiff ? but this is a vietnamese film and there's a gay character, i enjoyed my self a lot !!
i saw the trailer for this in 2019 and i thought, great, another movies catered to the male gooners! now, after 5 years, an edit on tiktok (!) has convinced me to give it a try, and i'm glad i did. very stunning cinematography, and a decent incoporation of vietnamese folk songs. i'm not an expert, so i don't know how historically accurate the costumes are, but i can tell a lot of effort went into it. the film was an attempt to raise awareness about a very important (and surprisingly, often forgotten) subject that is vietnamese women in ancient times. i don't understand why it was banned from screening, when a lot of other films featuring sex scenes passed the censorship. the film was definitely not subtle on terms of meaning and metaphors - i feel like those caterpillars and butterflies were screaming the whole time: "look at me! understand what i'm implying!". the acting does fall short in a lot of scenes (also, what's up with the super monotonous, foreign accent? is that supposed to be how people used to talk?), and the film doesn't elicit as much emotions - disgust, horror, empathy,.. as it should, since this is such a heavy topic. the chicken-killing scene feels to still and stiff ? but this is a vietnamese film and there's a gay character, i enjoyed my self a lot !!
