Vietnam’s Đổi Mới Cinema

Navigating Gender Relations in Tony Bui’s Three Seasons (1999)

Abstract

As a result of the neoliberal marketization, or Đổi Mới, that started in the late 1980s in the hitherto socialist Vietnam and of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States, overseas Vietnamese in the U.S. and other Western countries began to return to Vietnam to do business, including making films. Vietnamese-American Tony Bui’s Ba Mùa (Three Seasons), made in 1999, was the first American-produced film that was made in Vietnam after said normalization. Upon its release, Three Seasons was deeply appreciated by the Vietnamese- American community in the U.S. and lauded by critics for challenging the stereotypical images of Vietnamese people that have been ubiquitous in Hollywood and other Western “Vietnam movies” (Duong 2012; Janette 2006). This article argues that this applauded Vietnamese perspective in Three Seasons is constructed fundamentally as a Vietnamese male subjectivity without due consideration for a relevant female perspective. It argues that through several mechanisms, the film constructs female protagonists whose subjectivity is compromised and whose purpose is ultimately driven by men’s agendas. While the male protagonists are portrayed as artists and reliable guardians of Vietnamese traditional values, women are depicted as subscribers and followers of men’s beliefs, intellect, and art. The film’s reduced characterization of women compromises their agency and subjectivity, which informs them to operate only with a purpose and dream they borrow and/or inherit from men. Overall, Three Seasons laments the loss of tradition in the rapidly transforming society of Vietnam under Đổi Mới through a didactic tale where men are made superior educators and women are essentialized as learners.