Cyclo (DVD) (China Version) DVD Region All

A Scent of Green Papaya was filmed entirely on a soundstage outside Paris. Cyclo is filmed entirely on location in Ho Chi Minh city and it's a Third World Blade Runner eye-boggle: exposed wires running up crumbling cement walls; rotting apartment buildings full of empty, blood-stained rooms; hallways shin-deep in filthy water; a man named Mr. Lullaby who cocoons his victims in packing tape before snipping open their jugulars. It's a freaky kind of world - a harsher, crueler world - that the Cyclo (Le Van Loc) lives in.

He makes enough driving his cyclo (driver and vehicle share a name) to earn a living, but not enough to better his lot: he'll die with nothing to pass on but poverty. His broke-down path crosses Tony Leung's, a commandingly rumpled figure who mopes around Ho Chi Minh city in a yellowing linen suit organizing hits and drug deals. Tony's not poor the way the Cyclo is, having sold his emotions to pay for his living: he pimps a bevy of women whom he also seems to be in love with. One of them happens to be the Cyclo's sister (Tran Nu Yen Khe, the director's wife) who has become a fetish hooker (men pay to wash her feet), and the sinuous overlapping plotlines wind around each other like a sackful of snakes.

Although Tony's called "The Poet" in the credits, and we get to listen to his poetry in voice over, don't be fooled: everyone in this movie was stunted by something at an early age - poverty or abuse - and he's just a guy with a bad childhood who knows how to talk pretty; he's got no idea what poetry is. He only knows hurt.

A gorgeous movie crushingly concerned with work and the brutal repetition of menial tasks, Cyclo deserves to be reevaluated. You'll love to look at it, but as it suffocates you in its oppressive, humid embrace, you'll be glad you don't live there.

by Grady Hendrix