Water Buffalo

In Saigon, a woman is watching a TV soap opera about a child that sets out with a friend to find his father who went missing during the war of Independence–the edifying fable of commitment, in which political awareness is born out of contact with the Diem regime of terror and American occupiers, peasant solidarity in the National Liberation Front and the bonzes’ revolt. Vietnam/Tour/Detour/Two children. We see few images of this story… some vignettes on a TV set, inserts with cross fades, graphic effects giving the images the unreal aspect–both concrete and diaphanous–of a dream and of unexpected resurgence of the past into the present. What in fact carries this story is a voice, a woman’s melancholy voice whose accents are reminiscent of the songs of the “long-haired army”, of those women that joined the resistance movement. The woman watching the images is young. She did not experience the war. She remains silent. The story seems to come from another world. Images of her daily life, her family, of Saigon today underpin the two children’s initiatory journey on the Mekong, and give flesh to the woman’s body. ( Yann Lardeau)