Shiomi Akutagawa (George Lam) was a photojournalist in Vietnam just after the nation's liberation, and at the time, though there were celebrations going on, he was struck by the plight and the poverty of the children he saw there, such as a young boy making his way through the crowd on crutches. Now, three years later, there is a different story to tell, one where the children he sees are happy and productive in school, and the places handlers take him to illustrate how far they have come in addressing their issues. But something about this doesn't sit quite right with him: is he getting the full picture?
Boat People was the culmination of an investigation into Vietnam under its Communist regime over three films by Hong Kong director Ann Hui, and finding the place lacking, to say the least. It had been called Boat People internationally to make audiences' memories go to the images of the Vietnamese Boat People that had been a fixture on the television news for a period; at the time, many would have known what the title referred to, a major scandal as refugees from that part of the world were literally set adrift by other countries not wanting to take them in. This was to inform us how they got to where they were.
That is, onto the boats, rather than to a safe haven, so any happy ending was very qualified indeed. The film proved highly controversial and became a focus for an ideological battle at the Cannes Film Festival when it was promised a screening in competition, then that promise was withdrawn as the heat was turned up politically, with many on the left regarded Hui as attacking Vietnam needlessly. She was even accused of being a puppet of China, which had conducted its own war against the nation and allowed her to film there as a stand-in for Vietnam - with France keen to make up for its colonial past there, Boat People was never going to be welcomed.
Now decades have passed, and Hui has denied being anything but even-handed in her treatment of her subject, is it possible to look at the film objectively? It's true that as time goes by, and the controversies of South-East Asia recede and change, the politics of the piece grow less important as you watch than the plot about the human factor, though it is clear that the picture painted is not a happy one for the citizens we see. Indeed, it's bloody miserable - if anything, there's a pall of utter misery across the entire work, so much so that by the conclusion you may well be thinking, "Bloody Hell, they laid that on a bit thick!" It doesn't get so depressing as to be unintentionally comical, just vaguely ridiculous.
Much of that was down to almost every character ending up either dead or at a serious disadvantage, and they were not those in authority. Or rather, some of them had been in positions of authority but were disadvantaged by the caprices of a regime that relied on a culture of fear and accusation, where you could be minding your own business when suddenly the finger of suspicion pointed at you, and you would effectively be doomed. But the degree of violent death here was really rubbing your nose in it, from exploding landmines to massed machine gun fire: subtle it was not. Did it need to be? There was plenty of sentimentality with poor little souls stuck in orphanages and starved of human affection to the family the photographer grows attached to, at his peril (and theirs), yet tempered by the realistic approach. Maybe the most frustrating thing about it was it offered no solutions, merely depicted the problems. Music by Law Wing-Fai.
[The Criterion Collection release this title on Blu-ray with these special features:
New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by director Ann Hui, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New conversation between Hui and filmmaker Stanley Kwan, who was the movie's assistant director
Keep Rolling, a 2020 documentary about Hui made by Man Lim-chung, Hui's longtime production designer and art director
As Time Goes By, a 1997 documentary and self-portrait by Hui, produced by Peggy Chiao
Press conference from the 1983 Cannes International Film Festival
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: Essays by film critic Justin Chang and scholar Vinh Nguyen.]
