Sad Fish

Sầu Ngư

Sad Fish is an impressive second feature for this young filmmaker whose work is anything but
conventional. In this film, director Le-Van Kiet experiments with a non-linear, improvised
script (yes, I said “improvised” à la Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise). Yet, it feels so natural that
it is difficult to imagine how it could be better with scripted dialogue. Although most of us
have already seen three of the four main characters in title roles of other films, this time, their
acting feels completely different from anything they have done before. Most of them have
been type-casted for certain roles; however, Sad Fish will shatter your preconceptions of how
these actors have performed in the past.
Building on his last film, Dust of Life [Bui Doi], Kiet continues to deal with stories rooted within
the Vietnamese American community in Little Saigon, but this time, he talks about the even
darker side of our community, masked by the Mercedes-driving, Banana-Republic-wearing,
American-dream-living good folks who — behind this façade — have surmounting debts and
live a life of loneliness and desperation.
Set in present-day Little Saigon, Sad Fish follows four characters who have suffered a kind of
loss and for whom this is (or appears to be) their final day existing in their current state. They
are almost trapped in their glass-bowl worlds looking out, and yet, unable to reach the other
world they see—much like fish in an aquarium. An older woman (Kieu Chinh from Face and
Journey from the Fall) resolving to die on this particular day, leaves her home and all of her
worldly possessions behind to journey on an existential path to her expected “death.”
A foreign-exchange student (Orchid Lam Quynh from the “Asia” music series) is desperate to
stay in the U.S. at any cost, except by actually working hard. A failed real-estate agent (Long
Nguyen from Green Dragon and Journey from the Fall) loses his job and his sanity, but still has
his wits about him. Finally, a young man (Jayvee Mai from The Anniversary and Journey From
the Fall) is forced to confront a secret he has kept in the closet. Their four separate paths
converge to an emotionally tense ending, when everyone’s true limits are tested and where
truth and real life is never black or white.
- Tram Le

USA / 2009
90 mins / color video
Vietnamese with English subtitles
Producers: Jayvee Mai, Le-Van Kiet
Director : Le-Van Kiet
Writers : Jayvee Mai, Long Nguyen, Le-Van Kiet
Cinematographers : Andy Vu, Le-Van Kiet
Editor : Ngoc Ho, Andy Vu, Le-Van Kiet
Main Cast : Kieu Chinh, Long Nguyen, Orchid Lam Quynh, Jayvee Mai