You're a sinner, a fraud, the moral equivalent of a 10-car pileup. You also like movies. What to see?
The American people have answered this question to the tune of $366 million, a numeral very close to the Mark of the Beast that is coincidentally the most recent box-office take for Mel Gibson's gory The Passion of the Christ. The country's Christian majority loves the film for its simplistically ethical world-view, one that excuses all actions as long as you pledge allegiance to Him and buy the soundtrack afterward. It's the perfect approach to existence for this nation's latest, lamest Great Revival. And this is why the far-more-thoughtful treatise on sin, Westminster resident Victor Vu's Oan Hôn (Spirits), will likely struggle to reach mainstream audiences—the hoi polloi just doesn't want to ponder serious questions about the ramifications of sin unless it involves crucifixion and togas.
Oan Hôn's plot separates into three chapters that each read like a Buddhist Gospel. In the first, struggling scribe Loc (Tuan Cuong) treks through the Vietnamese countryside as he searches for an isolated location to write. He eventually stumbles upon what he thinks is an abandoned house but in actuality belongs to the property's sole inhabitant, Hoa (Kathy Nguyen). She's a demure, passive woman who waits upon Loc like a servant but volunteers little information about her past. Unsurprisingly, Loc—an unrepentant chauvinist who notes that Hoa's placemat personality matches that of the lotus-blossom female protagonists in his novels—soon seduces the lady.
But things turn strange after that initial night of lovemaking between Loc and Hoa. For starters, Loc finds Hoa on the ground unconscious before the sexual encounter, the victim of a terrible, inexplicable whipping. Loc then discovers from Hoa's dad the next day that Hoa died long ago at the hands of a savage husband. The shock of shacking up with a ghost turns Loc insane; only Linh, a beautiful nurse-in-training (played with guilty reserve by Kathleen Luong), brings him back to the living and his domineering ways.
Such a casual deconstructing of the barrier separating the terrestrial from the spiritual world might appear unrealistic to mainstream American audiences, even a bit Sixth Sense-ish. But this is an accepted ontology in Vietnamese culture, which dictates that things that go bump in the night are real but pose no threat unless you've somehow wronged them—in which case, you're screwed. Deliverance from evil is a fairy tale in this theology, and none of the characters in Oan Hôncan escape such an unsympathetic life force. In the film's second act, Loc and Linh are happily married, kept well-off thanks to revenue from Loc's novels featuring Hoa as the centerpiece. But domestic bliss quickly crumbles, as ghosts enter their household again once Linh gives birth to an invalid, mute daughter. The audience soon discovers—but never Loc—that Linh underwent many previous abortions as a rambunctious teenager. Now that she actually wants a child, karma rewards her with a living ghost.
Oan Hôn's second chapter is among the more chilling parables in recent cinematic memory, especially when Linh's daughter breaks her years-long silence to utter, “You should've thrown me in the river like you did all those other times. Now you're stuck with me.” The philosophy that actions are permanent and irredeemable will not be popular with mainstream audiences, but it ultimately functions as more truthful than Gibson's take on salvation. And by Oan Hôn's final segment (which involves a fraudulent feng shui practitioner and her hotheaded son), each protagonist has paid for the sins of their past despite their eventual repentance, all thanks to the vindictive nature of the cosmos.
Stylistically, Oan Hônis a beaut, relying mostly on natural lighting and featuring a soundtrack of crickets that meshes well with the tropical Vietnamese setting. The 28-year-old Vu and his crew shot Oan Hônalmost entirely in Orange County, turning our concrete cities into a realistic replica of the Mekong Delta. The river image that the film reverts to from time to time? The Bolsa Chica wetlands. The frightening, foggy jungle where many of the film's characters flee to when trying to escape those darn ghosts? The Santa Ana back yard of a crew member, according to Huntington Beach resident Nguyen Hoang Nam, one of the film's three erudite screenwriters. And yet another Orange County back yard served as the grounds on which to construct Loc's haunted manse. To all cinephiles bemoaning the lack of local auteurs: set your eyes upon Bolsa Avenue.
Oan Hôn (Spirits) was directed by Victor Vu; written by Nguyen Hoang Nam, Peter Vo and Vu; produced by philip Silverman; and stars Tuan Cuong, Kathleen Luong and Kathy Nguyen. Visit www.spiritsthemovie.com. Now playing at Edwards South Coast Village, Santa Ana.
