Outsider and insider views of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City: The Lover/L'Amant, Cyclo/Xích lô, Collective Flat/Chung c and Bargirls/Gái nhy

This article addresses representations of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in four films made since ?i mi, the opening up of Vietnam to western influences, initiated in 1986. The Lover/L'Amant (1992) is a Franco-British heritage film which reconstructs the city from a Eurocentric neocolonial perspective, while Cyclo/Xích lô (1995), a French-funded film made by a France-based Vietnamese filmmaker, is a contemporary poetic thriller which treats the city expressively as the site of present-day corruption and violence. The nostalgia evident in these two 'outsider' films is contrasted with the more complex views of the city in two state-funded low-budget 'insider' films by local Vietnamese filmmakers, Collective Flat/Chung c (1999) and Bargirls/Gái nhy (2003); the first, an intellectual fable set in the decade or so following reunification/Independence in 1975 which recalls an attempt at collective living, the second, a hugely popular treatment of contemporary urban realities, both corrupt and progressive. Examining how the mise-en-scène and narratives of the city differ from film to film, the essay takes the representation of the city through changing historical, political, social and economic times, from colonial-orientalist Saigon to corrupt, capitalist Ho Chi Minh City via the slow degeneration of the postwar socialist/collectivist experiment. In so doing, it confirms the importance of the films' moments and contexts of production in the construction of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City as a cinematic 'city-text'.