LAFF Review: Owl and the Sparrow

Owl and the Sparrow is one of those movies that you hope you'll run into at a film festival. The kind that you wander into, not knowing much about, maybe something from the logline in the festival guide caught your eye, maybe you liked the poster, or maybe it just filled a time slot nicely and you thought you'd check it out. However, once the film starts rolling and the story gets going, you count yourself lucky for having found it.

This is a wonderful, character-driven story that takes place on the streets of Saigon, which are presented unapologetically. The hustle and bustle of daily life is shown alongside the squalor and depravity that features children working, hawking everything from postcards to soup. During the day, the streets are filled with endless droves of people on motorscooters, flitting about the city, and at night it's transformed into a neon jungle full of nightlife.

The film goes out of it's way not to romanticize the city, but it also doesn't turn an evil eye on it either. You don't look at the way it's presented and pity the place, you come to accept it throughout the film as a part of the world where people have their daily and nightly routines, just like everywhere else. While the city is meant to serve only as the background for the story, it ends up being pivotal to the plot. The city keeps people apart, and brings them together, often at the times you would least expect it, but usually when someone most needs it.

The story is centered around a young Vietnamese girl named Thuy (played by the amazing Pham Thi Han in her feature film debut), who runs away from the bamboo factory where she works for her uncle. Since her parents are dead, her upbringing has been left to him and to him that means another pair of hands to work in the factory. If you've ever wondered where your bamboo shades are made, it's probably a place that looks much like this. An open-air room packed with women cutting and bundling up thin bamboo reeds with a bossman (the uncle) barking out orders and critiquing work.

Thuy sneaks out one evening after smashing her piggybank, and makes the long journey by foot and by ferry from the suburbs into the heart of Saigon. It's a very different world for her, and she quickly discovers that the little amount of money she's brought with her won't last long. Another girl tells her she can make money buy buying bundles of postcards from a shop and selling them for more money on the streets. She doesn't fare too well at that, and she's told to get a job of a flower girl, selling them at night to people at restaurants, bars, and clubs.

She's not exactly the most astute salesgirl, however, and frequently spends her time wandering around the city and daydreaming. This is how she meets the local zookeeper, Hai (Le The Lu) who is somewhat cut off from society and spends most of his time with his animals. He's saddened because he's just found out the zoo will be selling their baby elephant to India, in order to help control costs. He's spent most of his life working at the zoo, and took over as zookeeper after his father died. Thuy wanders into the zoo one day in her flower girl getup and tries to feed roses to the elephants. Hai stops her, offers her some proper elephant feed, and they strike up a friendship fairly quickly.

She also meets Lan, (Cat Ly) a flight attendant who has frequent trips to Saigon. She stays at the same hotel where the two young girls who run the front desk worry about her, since she never has a boyfriend or a husband. What they don't know is that Lan is having an affair with the married captain on her crew, but that makes her ashamed and uneasy, and she eventually stops seeing him. The two girls try and set her up with a magician, but she doesn't feel any sparks and ditches the poor guy on their date. She drowns her sorrows in some of the local soup ("Best in the city!", according to the boy who brings in customers) and meets Thuy, who sells her some flowers.

If you couldn't see this coming from a mile away, Thuy has the bright idea to play matchmaker to Lan and Hai. However, that doesn't make it any more touching, and it also has unexpected results. Thuy's uncle has begun searching for her in earnest throughout the city, and this ultimately leads to problems for everyone involved. Thuy isn't only trying to play matchmaker, she's also searching for new parents, and a new life. She frequently plays with dolls from her backpack, which are pretty much her only possessions, and has the boy doll ask the girl doll on dates. She needs authority in her life, but the only kind she encounters is the truant officer who sends her to a boarding school in town.

Pham Thi Ham has most of the dialogue (and screen time) in the film, but she frequently conveys more information with her dour look and scowling face as she searches for her place in the world. She is a wonderfully expressive young actress who carries this film on her back and pulls off a great performance. Cat Ly and Le The Lu are terrific as well, but the real chemistry of the film lies with Pham, and hopefully we'll see more of her in the future.

The film was shot with small, consumer-grade cameras, and frequently features long takes from the back of a scooter. It was shot in only 15 days, with a guerilla crew, and often right in the heart of Saigon. The director, Stephane Gauger, was born in Saigon, although he was raised in Orange County, California, and wanted the film to capture "the essence of a changing society." It's a love letter to a Saigon that we seldom see in America, but remains close to Gauger's heart. The movie ended up winning the audience award at the festival, and is well worth seeing if it comes to a city or a DVD player near you.