Given
the controversy that once embroiled filmmaker Victor Vu, the title of his subsequent
signature franchise is certainly apt. Charges that his 2010 picture Inferno bears suspicious similarities to
Wolfgang Petersen’s Shattered have
not slowed down his career much from an outsider’s vantage point, while
Petersen was probably just shocked anyone remembers Shattered. Regardless, his flashy exploration of fame, jealousy,
and media gossip-mongering will upend many people’s preconceptions of
Vietnamese film. Fittingly, Vu’s Scandal (trailer here) screens during
the 2015 edition of New Vietnamese Cinema at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Y
Linh is an up-and-coming model-actress, who finally starts realizing her
superstar dreams after her marriage to entrepreneur Hoang Kiet. Her first films
are blockbusters directed by the Spielberg-esque Le Hung and produced by the
slimy Thien. Unfortunately, everything changes when her husband meets the home-wrecking
singer-model, Tra My. Soon Thien is openly carrying on with Tra My, who also
steals the movie roles Y Linh was expecting. To make matters worse, she starts suffering
from mystery maladies traditional doctors cannot diagnose, but witch doctors
recognize only too well. Concluding Tra My placed a curse on her, Y Linh fights
back the only place she can—in the press.
To
an extent, one can hear echoes of the Jolie-Aniston tabloid affair in Scandal, but the alleged black magic
adds an entirely new wrinkle, at least as far as we know. Despite all the
Vietnamese film industry awards it racked up, Scandal is not exactly high art. It is glitzy, glossy, and often
shamelessly lurid. Of course, all that scandalous behavior makes good trashy
entertainment.
Vân
Trang and Mai Thu Huong (a.k.a. Maya) embrace their inner divas as Y Linh and
Tra My, respectively. Frankly, it is just a lot of fun to watch them rage at each
other. Khuong Ngoc and Mihn Thuan are not exactly shy hamming it up as the
director and producer, either. Clearly, this is not a business or a film for
shrinking violets.
