On Sunday, March 4, 2012 Cinema Art Bethesda will present the Vietnamese film, Owl and the Sparrow (Cú và chim se sẻ). The film is 97 minutes long and is in Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Synopsis
A beautiful flight attendant looking for love. A lonely zookeeper hiding within his animal kingdom from a changing society. A little orphan girl selling roses on the streets who relies on the kindness of strangers to survive. It’s modern-day Saigon, where eight million people are just trying to keep up with the pace.
Thuy, a scrappy ten year old who lives on the outskirts of the city, has no choice in life but to work in her uncle’s bamboo factory. That is, until she packs her bags to run away into the city. Now forced to survive on her own, she first sells postcards, then flowers, on the streets. Lan, the flight attendant, arrives at Ho Chi Minh airport on a five day layover, checking into the same family-run hotel every week. The hotel girls wonder why she’s alone, but Lan only tells them that she’s just hard to understand. She doesn’t tell them that she’s having a secret affair with the airline pilot. Hai, a zookeeper living in a shack on the park grounds, is nursing a broken heart after his fiance left him. He lives only for his animals now, until the zoo director tells him that his beloved elephant will soon be shipped off to an Indian zoo.
In four days, the young runaway will play matchmaker to these lonely hearts in hopes of forming a surrogate family. The only thing that might stop her are city authorities who want her in an orphanage and an overbearing uncle tracking her down in the big city.
(adapted text from official site)
Selected Awards and Accolades
Winner Festival Prize
Big Apple Film Festival
Winner Emerging Filmmaker Award
Denver International Film Festival
Winner Netpac Award
Hawaii International Film Festival
Nominated John Cassavetes Award
Independent Spirit Awards
Selected Reviews
The New York Times
– Nathan Lee
If “Owl and the Sparrow” were any slighter, it wouldn’t exist. Stephane Gauger’s debut feature is a charming little movie, nothing more, but he brings a tonic freshness to his simple, even simple-minded tale of a plucky orphan, Thuy (Pham Thi Han), playing cupid in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. Mr. Gauger was fortunate to discover his unassuming lead; young Ms. Pham brings a humble, winning charisma to the role of a provincial girl who ditches her hardships to eke out a living selling postcards and flowers in the big city. But it’s the filmmaker’s infectious love for the metropolis — bustling and bright, whimsical and idealized — that gives “Owl and the Sparrow” its mellow vibrancy.
The Village Voice
– Tim Grierson
Owl and the Sparrow is yet one more film that preaches the importance of opening your heart and reaching out to those around you, but that treacly sentiment is nicely undercut by the unvarnished naturalness of the actors.
Los Angeles Times
– Betsy Sharkey
What [director] Gauger has created is a quietly affecting fairy tale.
Trailer available at official site or watch embedded YouTube video below.
