Three Seasons

Seasons come and go; so do national crises. With headlines focused on the Balkans, the Vietnam War seems almost a nostalgic memory. So it is in Tony Bui's Three Seasons, the first American film shot in that country: the wounds of history recede before a charming postcard of picturesque love and loss. A lyrical quartet of languidly interlinked tales set in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City (the former Saigon), Seasons settles for platitudes rather than politics.

Not that it is without some edge. One story features Hai (Don Duong), a long-suffering pedicab driver who notes with his colleagues the unfair distribution of wealth in the new Vietnam when they pick up snooty fares at ritzy hotels. Among those fares is Lan (Zoë Bui), a young prostitute with whom Hai falls predictably in love. Then there's James Hager (a wooden Harvey Keitel), a Marine vet searching for his long-lost daughter. In his drunken peregrinations he bumps into Woody (Nguyen Huu Duoc), a street urchin selling war-vintage Zippo lighters, and finally into Kien An (Nguyen Ngoc Hiep), a young flower seller with her own tale to tell.

Bittersweet, periodically poetic and engaging, Seasons squeezes tears from such scenes as a rain-soaked orphan sharing her last bun or a leprosy-stricken poet's flower-strewn final request. But twenty-five years later and 12,000 miles away, Bui's film hardly seems worth the long trip back.

-- Peter Keough