The Scent of Green Papaya Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
If you want to see beauty in the little things in 1950’s Saigon, check out The Scent of Green Papaya. It follows a young maid who is hired to work for an upper class family. Their home and garden is a quiet sanctuary in the middle of a busy city, where her inquisitive nature finds beauty everywhere. It’s a delight for the senses.
From: Vietnam, Asia
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon, Buy on Amazon, Watch on YouTube
Next: In the Mood for Love, Good Morning, Black Girl
Why Watch The Scent of Green Papaya?
- For it’s portrayal of Saigon in peace time (the whole film was shot on a sound stage in Paris).
- If you like classical/traditional music – this film feels more like a piece of music than a film.
- For a quiet love story which doesn’t need words to express itself.
- To see beauty in the little things.
The Breakdown
The Scent of Green Papaya starts in a well lit back-street at night. The street is empty except for a person sleeping under a mosquito net outside of the entrance of their home.
A young girl (Mui) appears at the far end of the street dressed in ragged clothes. She slowly walks towards us, stopping at each doorway, looking for something. She eventually settles on a door and her knocks are answered by an older woman who ushers her into a bed. The young girl is the new house servant arriving at her new workplace and home.
Exploiting the senses to rePlAce dialogue
From the start, this film is a sensory overload. It’s why there’s not much dialogue in the whole film, as all the sounds, feelings, and smells permeate through the screen to do the talking.
The most noticeable is the music. And there’s three types of music to listen for:
- The Soundtrack – which sounds similar to the music you hear in the films from the classic golden age of Hollywood (loud and emotional).
- Traditional Vietnamese music – this is always diegetic (ie. the source of the music is seen on screen) and played by the father and his sons.
- Western Classical Music – also diegetic, and played by Khuyen in the last part of the film.
Each type of music signifies different characteristics and moods, explained below.
Firstly, the film opens with the soundtrack which plays as Mui enters the film. By introducing Mui, the soundtrack associates her with the classic Hollywood protagonists, immediately identifying her as someone to sympathise with, and a candidate for the rags to riches trope. It’s the musical equivalent of the spotlight – the loud and bold sounds say “hey, look at me”.
The music changes as Mui enters the threshold of her upper class employers. The soundtrack disappears and the traditional music takes centre stage alongside the sound of crickets and cicadas. The traditional music signifies the family’s attachment to the past. It conveys a mix of longing and sadness. Longing for a past that no longer exists and a sadness because of the lives they’ve lost (their daughter and father). The traditional music even sounds more melancholic than the bold opening soundtrack.
Finally, the western music appears later in the film as played by Khuyen when Mui starts to work for him. He plays the western music on an American Steinway grand piano – a symbol of wealth. In contrast to the melancholic traditional music, the western music signifies modernity and change – the influence of the growing connection of Vietnam with the world. And when Khuyen starts composing his own music inspired by the western music, his music looks to the future, contrasting with the backward looking traditional music. His creations signify a new free Vietnamese future shaped by the people where class and background no longer matter.
Space and open places
The whole section in the first family’s home reminded me a lot of Ozu’s Good Morning in the way that all the space – even the private space – is open.
In this case, Tran Anh Hung (the director), composes a lot of his shots with open windows and doors in the background, as well as shots looking through gaps in windows and gates. As a result, you will notice that every room, both private and shared, is open to the rest of the house and the outside. You’ll notice people wandering around outside the room of the character the camera is focused on.
By showing that all spaces are open (even to the public outside), the director emphasises the lack of private space in this home – anyone can see anything, as shown when the grandma’s old admirer climbs up to her room to get a glimpse of her because she no longer strolls around the garden.
This openness makes the negative events doubly bad, as your suffering is in plain sight of everyone. This is why the mother chooses to suffer in silence, so outsiders cannot see their fragility of their social standing – they continue to live in luxury even when they can barely afford it.
Lastly, like Ozu’s Good Morning, the openness creates much more intimacy. Just as characters pop up and visit their home, we feel welcome to enter their home and explore the beauty of their garden. It creates bonds with the characters in which a house and garden with walls and no windows would not. (Walls and no windows block things happening naturally in the background from view).
Visualizing the class bOundaries
The family she works for is part of the Vietnamese upper class. They have a house and garden full of space in what is presumably the centre of the city. Whilst the mother of the family that Mui works for treats her like her own daughter at times, the youngest sons remind her of her place as a maid. This is clearly shown when the youngest son tips over the cleaning water Mui is using in one scene, and when he urinates into a vase she is supposed to clean in another. It’s his way of telling her that even though he is younger than her, he is still the boss.
Their class difference is also more subtly shown through the ants. In one scene, Mui gazes at a group of worker ants crawling across the floor with wonder as they carry pieces of salt. The shot shows her affinity with nature and sympathy for the ants. They, just like her, are hard workers completely immersed in their working life. In contrast, in another scene, the older son secretly drizzles molten wax onto some ants crawling by his bedroom window and crushes any left alive with his finger. Whilst Mui sympathisers with ants which work hard like her, the son asserts his dominance over the vulnerable worker ants. It shows that even at a young age they both know their place – Mui as a worker, and the son as someone people work for.
What to Watch Next
Firstly if you want to watch more Vietnamese film, check out When the Tenth Month Comes by Dang Nhat Minh, Buffalo Boy by Minh Nguyen-Vo, or Cyclo from Tran Anh Hung (the same director as The Scent of Green Papaya).
I’d also recommend watching In the Mood for Love, if you enjoyed the quiet, serene beauty in this film. Also you should watch Ozu’s Good Morning which uses space a lot like this film. It also moves around a small neighbourhood through open doors and alleys.
Lastly, if you want to watch more films about servants or maids, you should watch Ousmane Semebene’s classic, Black Girl. Or for something more sensual and thrilling, check out Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden.
','' ); } ?>