Pauline Chan's 'Traps' shows another Vietnam<\/p>\n
By Matthew Lewis<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE (Reuter): Pauline Chan thinks most movies about
\nVietnam have somehow got it wrong -- which is one reason why she
\nmade her own.<\/p>\n
Chan, director of the award-winning Vietnam film Traps,
\nescaped from the country as a teenager in 1973 after an eight-
\nmonth kidnapping by the Viet Cong.<\/p>\n
When she finally returned to her homeland 20 years later, it
\nwas to direct her first feature-length film. Traps was released
\nlast year in Australia to glowing reviews.<\/p>\n
\"I longed to go back for many years, but it felt too painful
\nto even contemplate,\" Chan told Reuters. \"But with the film I
\nfelt there's a purpose, a reason that gave me strength to
\nactually go back and confront the ghost.\"<\/p>\n
The Sydney-based director was in Singapore recently to attend
\nthe film's regional premiere.<\/p>\n
The 96-minute Traps has won awards in Australia and France. It
\nwill be released later this year in Japan, North America and
\nBrazil, said Chan.<\/p>\n
Traps is about an English couple who visit a French-owned
\nrubber plantation in 1950s colonial Indochina. There they become
\nembroiled in the personal, sexual and political tensions of their
\nhosts. It has been called daring and provocative, with powerfully
\nrealistic sex scenes.<\/p>\n
One Australian reviewer wrote of Traps: \"Rarely has there been
\na film... which captures such a visceral sense of tropical
\nlassitude and sexual effusion.\"<\/p>\n
Chan set Traps in the 1950s because expatriate women
\ncharacters in colonial times were central to her story. She
\nwanted to show Vietnam through a few \"personal, everyday lives\"
\nrather than through battle scenes and global politics.<\/p>\n
Previous Vietnam movies were \"basically very romantic or
\nnostalgic versions of what the westerners see of the Vietnam
\nWar\", said Chan.<\/p>\n
She said that in some ways a female director is better
\nequipped to probe characters' internal struggles than a male.<\/p>\n
\"Women are more sensitive, more interested in personal
\nrelationships and personal journeys through a dilemma like war or
\ndisaster.\"<\/p>\n
The half-Chinese, half-Vietnamese Chan turned to movies
\nnaturally. Her great uncle was Wu Chu-fang, whom she describes as
\nthe Humphrey Bogart of the Chinese film industry 40 years ago.
\nHer mother was a stage actress.<\/p>\n
After escaping from Vietnam in the 1970s, Chan wound up acting
\nin Hong Kong movies. It was an experience she loathed. \"You feel
\nyou're just a vehicle for the producers and directors to get
\nrich, and all the female roles are full of cliches.\"<\/p>\n
Chan eventually decided to study film in Los Angeles and
\nAustralia. Two of her short films were shown at the Cannes Film
\nFestival.<\/p>\n
Asked about her influences, she cites Roman Polanski's early
\nfilms and Akira Kurosawa. \"I have many heroes in the black and
\nwhite, Chinese and Japanese era, but I think Kurosawa would be my
\nidol.\"<\/p>\n
Chan is proud that Traps was the first English-language drama
\nthe Vietnamese authorities allowed to be filmed in the country.<\/p>\n
\"It's like a dream of many, many years coming true, for my
\nfirst full-length drama to be shot in my homeland. I felt very
\nproud, but at the same time, scared and emotional, and quite sad
\nabout the past.\"<\/p>\n
Chan, who is 3O-ish, did not learn English until university.
\nShe says she considers herself Australian but that emotionally
\nshe is still an Asian.<\/p>\n
She is wary of being typecast as an ethnic Asian director and
\nsays she is now writing her next project about \"sexual
\nrelationships in the '90s\", set in Australia.<\/p>\n
She has no ambition to make big-budget movies in the United
\nStates. \"I have been offered projects to do in America, but I
\nhaven't found anything that's appealing to me. My key interest is
\nthe story first. As a filmmaker you go wherever the story takes
\nyou.\"<\/p>",
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