# The Scent of Green Papaya
**The Scent of Green Papaya** (Vietnamese: *Mùi đu đủ xanh*; French: *L'Odeur de la papaye verte*) is a 1993 drama film written and directed by Trần Anh Hùng, his first feature, about a servant girl named Mui who grows up in two Saigon households in the 1950s and 1960s[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/mui-du-du-xanh/) • [2](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1994/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya/). It won the Caméra d'Or for best first film at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, a César Award for best first feature, and became the first Vietnamese film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[3](https://www.art-it.asia/en/u/maisonhermes_e/6xs1tbjldnukszh8ap74/) • [4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | Trần Anh Hùng, a French-Vietnamese filmmaker born in 1962 in Da Nang; his first feature[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) |
| Titles | *Mùi đu đủ xanh* (Vietnamese), *L'Odeur de la papaye verte* (French)[1](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/mui-du-du-xanh/) |
| Setting | Two bourgeois Saigon households, in 1951 and 1961[2](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1994/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya/) |
| Lead role | Mui, played by Lu Man San at age 10 and by Trần Nữ Yên Khê, the director's wife, at age 20[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Benoît Delhomme; music Tôn-Thất Tiết; production design Alain Nègre[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) |
| Awards | Caméra d'Or, Cannes 1993; César for best first feature; Oscar nomination, Best Foreign Language Film[3](https://www.art-it.asia/en/u/maisonhermes_e/6xs1tbjldnukszh8ap74/) • [4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) |
| Runtime and release | 104 minutes; US theatrical release January 28, 1994; US gross $1.1 million[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-scent-of-green-papaya) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The film follows Mui, a girl from the countryside who enters household service in Saigon in 1951, at age ten, with an affluent but troubled family[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) • [6](https://www.kpl.gov/catalog/item/?i=ent%3A%2F%2FSD_ILS%2F0%2FSD_ILS%3A1831583). The household is marked by sorrow: the father repeatedly leaves home with his wife's earnings, the mother runs a fabric shop and tends two sons, and a grandmother mourns upstairs[7](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/02/18/ripe-reverie-of-papaya/c7300267-d7e7-4e02-a84c-bbc9f5000265/). An old servant named Thi teaches Mui the domestic routine, including the preparation of green papaya[7](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/02/18/ripe-reverie-of-papaya/c7300267-d7e7-4e02-a84c-bbc9f5000265/).
Ten years later, in 1961, the family can no longer afford to keep her, and Mui, now twenty, is sent to work for Khuyen, a friend of the family's eldest son who has become a successful pianist[8](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/87345--the-scent-of-green-papaya-lodeur-de-la-papaye-verte/) • [2](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1994/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya/). Khuyen has a girlfriend, but he gradually recognizes his connection with Mui, whom she has admired since childhood, and the two move toward romance[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-scent-of-green-papaya). The [Vietnam War](https://www.edgepedia.org/vietnam-war) is kept almost entirely offscreen, registering only as distant sirens and overhead planes[2](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1994/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya/).
### Interpretation
Hùng has described the film as an attempt to deal with "the problem of servitude," especially as it affects Vietnamese women; Mui's path from wonderment through domestic labor to devotion to a man works, in Rayns's reading, as a double-edged metaphor[10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/events/2024/02/08/scent-of-green-papaya/). The film scholar Lan Duong, in *Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism* (2012), reads the film as representing female solidarity, with women across class lines united by duty and trauma while the men withdraw into music and art[12](https://cjdproject.web.nycu.edu.tw/2021/02/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya-female-solidarity-and-male-disengagement/).
Other critics have been more skeptical. Jonathan Rosenbaum argued that the studio shooting increases the film's touristic exoticism, placing Vietnam "under glass"[13](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/12/vietnam-under-glass/), and a 1994 review in *Green Left* called the film flawed by an émigré's sentimentality for his homeland[14](https://www.greenleft.org.au/1994/137/culture/feast-eyes-not-brain).
## Production
**A Vietnam built in France.** Hùng planned to shoot in [Ho Chi Minh City](https://www.edgepedia.org/ho-chi-minh-city), but the difficulty of finding houses with the architecture he envisioned, the lack of a local film industry able to supply camera and sound crews, and the coming monsoon season ended the plan[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). French co-producers also made studio shooting a condition of financing[9](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/film-fruit-of-his-labours-at-last-a-film-about-vietnam-that-s-made-by-a-vietnamese-director-and-filmed-in-paris-sheila-johnston-talks-to-tran-anh-hung-about-his-adventures-on-the-scent-of-green-papaya-1367187.html). The entire film was made on French soundstages; the BFI notes place the studio at Bry-sur-Marne[10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/events/2024/02/08/scent-of-green-papaya/), while the Yale Film Archive notes place it in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104).
The set reproduced a 1950s Saigon household in meticulous detail, populated with reptiles, fish, insects, and plants, notably papaya trees[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). Hùng told *The Independent* that the studio was kept as hot and humid as Vietnam, with 900 kilowatts of lighting and vegetation kept watered; the imported papaya plants died in transit, so trunks were used with fake leaves attached[9](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/film-fruit-of-his-labours-at-last-a-film-about-vietnam-that-s-made-by-a-vietnamese-director-and-filmed-in-paris-sheila-johnston-talks-to-tran-anh-hung-about-his-adventures-on-the-scent-of-green-papaya-1367187.html).
**Casting.** Hùng used non-professional actors, mostly Vietnamese living in Paris, who had to re-learn certain ritual gestures and the [Vietnamese language](https://www.edgepedia.org/vietnamese-language)[8](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/87345--the-scent-of-green-papaya-lodeur-de-la-papaye-verte/). The director's wife, Trần Nữ Yên Khê, plays the adult Mui and appeared in five of his films[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104).
## Style
The film is built from sensory detail rather than plot. Hùng and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme use long takes, compositions with frames within frames, and elaborate camera movements that link interiors and exteriors, often letting them flow together[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). Tony Rayns, writing in *Sight and Sound*, described the structure as alternating between huge close-ups of small details, such as Mui's finger probing the seed-pulp inside an unripe papaya, and extended wide-angle tracking shots that follow the household's routines[10](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/events/2024/02/08/scent-of-green-papaya/).
Dialogue is sparse, with long stretches without speech, especially in the last half hour, and the film emphasizes sight, sound, and Mui's experiences of taste, touch, and smell[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). Hùng has said the title came from childhood memories of his mother preparing papayas, whose scent acted for him, in his words, like Proust's madeleine[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). In Vietnamese, "mùi" means scent, which would make the Vietnamese title a kind of pun on the heroine's name, though Hùng has said there is no link between the two[11](https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28926/1/10673133.pdf).
## Reception and legacy
The film won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1993 and opened in the United States to enthusiastic reviews[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). Janet Maslin of *The New York Times* called it a "luxuriant, visually seductive debut" that "barely needs dialogue," and Roger Ebert of the *Chicago Sun-Times* wrote that watching it was "like seeing a poem for the eyes" and called it "a film to cherish"[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 66th Academy Awards, the first Vietnamese-language film to receive that nomination, and remains the only Vietnamese film nominated in the category[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104) • [15](https://vfda.vn/bo-phim-duy-nhat-cua-dien-anh-viet-tung-co-ten-trong-danh-sach-de-cu-chinh-thuc-cua-oscar-d7889.html).
Its success helped Hùng secure funding for two further films about Vietnam, *Cyclo* (1995), shot in Ho Chi Minh City, and *The Vertical Ray of the Sun* (2000), shot in Hanoi, completing what has become known as his Vietnam Trilogy[4](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104). A 1998 restoration supported a theatrical re-release[16](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/GreenPapayaNotes.pdf), and the film has remained a touchstone of Vietnamese diasporic cinema[11](https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28926/1/10673133.pdf).
## References
1. [MUI DU DU XANH, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/mui-du-du-xanh/)
2. [The Scent Of Green Papaya, Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader, 1994)](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1994/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya/)
3. [L'odeur de la papaye verte, ART iT](https://www.art-it.asia/en/u/maisonhermes_e/6xs1tbjldnukszh8ap74/)
4. [Film Notes: THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA, Yale University Library](https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00104)
5. [The Scent of Green Papaya, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-scent-of-green-papaya)
6. [The scent of green papaya, Kalamazoo Public Library](https://www.kpl.gov/catalog/item/?i=ent%3A%2F%2FSD_ILS%2F0%2FSD_ILS%3A1831583)
7. [RIPE REVERIE OF 'PAPAYA', The Washington Post (1994)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/02/18/ripe-reverie-of-papaya/c7300267-d7e7-4e02-a84c-bbc9f5000265/)
8. [The Scent of green papaya, ACMI collection](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/87345--the-scent-of-green-papaya-lodeur-de-la-papaye-verte/)
9. [Fruit of his labours: Sheila Johnston talks to Tran Anh Hung, The Independent (1994)](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/film-fruit-of-his-labours-at-last-a-film-about-vietnam-that-s-made-by-a-vietnamese-director-and-filmed-in-paris-sheila-johnston-talks-to-tran-anh-hung-about-his-adventures-on-the-scent-of-green-papaya-1367187.html)
10. [The Scent of Green Papaya, BFI Southbank Programme Notes (Tony Rayns, Sight and Sound, 1994)](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/events/2024/02/08/scent-of-green-papaya/)
11. [Identity in Vietnamese Diasporic Cinema, SOAS thesis](https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28926/1/10673133.pdf)
12. [The Scent Of Green Papaya: Female Solidarity and Male Disengagement, Hanh T. L. Nguyen (2021)](https://cjdproject.web.nycu.edu.tw/2021/02/03/the-scent-of-green-papaya-female-solidarity-and-male-disengagement/)
13. [Vietnam Under Glass, Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader, 1994)](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/12/vietnam-under-glass/)
14. [Feast for the eyes, not the brain, Green Left (1994)](https://www.greenleft.org.au/1994/137/culture/feast-eyes-not-brain)
15. [Bộ phim duy nhất của điện ảnh Việt từng có tên trong danh sách đề cử chính thức của Oscar, VFDA](https://vfda.vn/bo-phim-duy-nhat-cua-dien-anh-viet-tung-co-ten-trong-danh-sach-de-cu-chinh-thuc-cua-oscar-d7889.html)
16. [Treasures from the Yale Film Archive film notes PDF](https://web.library.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/GreenPapayaNotes.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films early 1990s*
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