The Taste of Things

1950s Saigon through the eyes of Mui, a Vietnamese servant girl. At 10 years-old, Mui leaves her village to work for an affluent, troubled family. As she comes of age, Mui finds work in the household of a pianist she has admired since childhood, and finds their relationship growing in complexity.

Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.

14-year-old Ròm works as bookie lottery runner to earn a living. He lives an unsettling life due to his separation from his parents and always yearns to earn enough money to find them.

Hanoi comes across almost picture-perfect in director Tran Anh Hung's beautiful, elegiac tale about the lives and loves of three Vietnamese sisters. A mood characteristic of Hung's films is set early on with the vivid sounds of birds, insects and water and the way the lighting enhances the subtle use of color. They all combine to gem-like effect here.

Though only 14 years old, May is selected to be the third wife of a wealthy landowner. Her new home seems idyllic, her husband favours her, and she quickly becomes pregnant with what she is certain will be the desired male progeny. But trouble is quietly brewing: she witnesses a forbidden tryst that will spark a chain reaction of misfortunes — and stir in May urges that until now had been dormant.

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

The cinematic tale recounts the story of a woman whose husband has left for war. When night comes, she pretends to her child that the shadow projected on a sheet is his father. When the father returns, two years later, the child rejects him, telling him that his father only returns at night.

Is the tale of a man and a woman, both boat people, who meet in a transit refugee camp in Indonesia. Years later, they live in Paris, married with a child. One day, the husband discovers that his wife happens to be his younger sister.

When they discover that they are pregnant, a young couple in Hanoi resort to desperate (and bizarre) measures to raise money for an abortion.

Valentine marries at the end of the 19th century, and love passes through her family from generation to generation.

Kline, a former Los Angeles police officer turned private detective, is hired by a powerful pharmaceutical conglomerate boss to investigate in Asia the disappearance of his only son, Shitao, whom he has not seen in person since the boy was ten. Now in his 30s, Shitao has gone missing in the Philippines where he had been helping in an orphanage.

In an old house in Hanoi, Bi, a 6-year-old child lives with his parents, his aunt and their cook. His favorite playgrounds are an ice factory and the wild grass along the river. After being absent for years, his grandfather, seriously ill, reappears and settles at their house. While Bi gets closer to his grandfather, his father tries to avoid any contact with his family. Every night, he gets drunk and goes and see his masseuse, for whom he feels a quiet strong desire. Bi's mother turns a blind eye on it. The aunt, still single, meets a 16-year-old young boy in the bus. Her attraction to him moves her deeply.

When she was seven, Elise Gardet witnessed her mother’s brutal murder. Ever since, she has tried to forget this unsolved crime. Now she’s 18 and beautiful, but her bourgeois family and her stepmother’s anxiety are suffocating her.