Cinema
Giải hạn
Vũ Xuân Hưng · 1996
Synopsis
Triệu, an orphan, has come as a daughter-in-law into an old weavers' village in the delta. Her husband Đại has gone to work abroad; he comes home and announces that he wants a divorce so as to settle in Hanoi and go into business with his mistress. His mother and Thiện, his younger brother, oppose it, and the household divides between those who want to keep the daughter-in-law and the one who wants to leave. The village, for its part, watches and judges.
Context
The film appears at the moment when going abroad to work is becoming an ordinary way out for the villages of the North, and this is where it draws its subject. Lê Vy plays Triệu, and Trần Lực and Trung Hiếu play the two brothers. The title names a rite for warding off bad luck and serves here as an image: what strikes this family is no misfortune sent from the heavens, and no ceremony will change anything.
Who it is for
In Vietnamese. Nothing to know beforehand, except what the title means: a ceremony one pays for to ward off a year's bad luck.
Prizes and reception
Silver Lotus at the eleventh national festival in 1996, where Lê Vy was crowned; prize of the film association the same year, and audience award at Newport Beach in 1998.