The Scent of Green Papaya

An almost painfully beautiful film.

The sensitivity to lighting, the hushed atmosphere, the extremely spare dialogue and the lingering narrative style make it a cinematic delicacy of the rarest kind. The film won two prizes at Cannes and drew an unexpectedly large audience when it was released in cinemas here in Norway.

Ten-year-old Mùi begins working as a servant girl for a wealthy family in Saigon in 1951. From an older servant woman, she learns that the oppressive mood in the house stems from the recent death of the family's daughter, who would have been the same age as Mùi herself. This has caused the grandmother to withdraw completely, the father to disappear, and Mùi to become the household children’s scapegoat. Only the lady of the house sees Mùi as a kind of replacement for her lost daughter, and when the servant girl leaves the family after ten years, she is given jewelry and a dress that had been intended for the deceased girl.

Cinemateket Oslo