Rating: 
Summary: Simplified culture
Review: "The Scent of Green Papaya" tells the evolution of Vietnamese society in its 1950s through the story of Mui, a girl from the rural area, from being a servant in an upper class family to her marriage with a westernized pianist. The focal point of the movie is very much on the cultural richness of Vietnam. You can easily feel that each frame is very carefully set and shot. The camerawork is slow, but sometimes very formularized, and so is the acting.The director Tran An Hung has been living in Paris for years. His dream of his parents' culture makes Vietnam the obvious choice for his film. The seemly artistic presentation of Vietnamese society received a lot of recognition in the West (Oscar nomination for the best foreign movie). But in my humble opinion, this acclaimed movie depicts a Vietnam that exists in this westernized director's fantasy rather than the Vietnam in the ordinary native Vietnamese's heart. The real Vietnamese culture has to be way beyond just a simple collection of symbolized exotic items presented in this movie.
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Summary: The Oriental genre; serenity and bliss...
Review: ...are found in this soothing,enchantingly lovely, and meditative film. The feeling of peace that watching it gave me lasted for days. It's truly a special experience. It must be viewed in a peaceful situation that will allow you to absorb every nuance.
Rating:
Summary: Something You Won't Soon Forget
Review: A young girl leaves home to live and work for a wealthy family during the war with America. She rises early, works all day and goes to bed late. She is hassled initially by the children of the family until they grow up. The husband is rarely home - far too busy drinking, gambling and womanising to tend to his family, and as she grows older, she watches the family lose its wealth until the point where they can no longer afford to keep servants, and she becomes a live-in servant of a wealthy pianist. Although he initially has a girlfriend, he becomes taken with his new hired-hand, and they marry. This film is excellent, and relies often on the ample soundtrack and facial expressions of the girl, whose delight in all that is simple (she spends ages watching the insects go about their business at one stage) is a sheer delight. And although we see more of her at this stage of her life, the actress who plays her when she has reached her twenties in the last third of the film is no less capable. The war is kept in the background - simply as something which was happening at the time. Highly recommended by many, and deservedly so, if Green Papaya doesn't touch you emotionally at least once, then something must be wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Absolutely phenomenal! This is, by far, my favorite Vietnamese film. Rather than repeat what other reviewers have said, I will just say that I can not recommend this film highly enough. It really stays with you. BEAUTIFUL!!!
Rating:
Summary: Listen to the background
Review: Absorb the background in this well done movie,listen to the crickets,look at each scene for its artistic frame.Touch the seeds of the green papaya,this movie will take you away and awaken your senses....................
Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't stop thinking about it
Review: After I saw this video, I couldn't stop thinking about it for more than a week. Very haunting, in a beautiful way...
Rating:
Summary: Simple but delightful.
Review: After seeing this sweet little film, I wanted to make my own movies. More to the point, I wanted to run right out and buy my own movie camera and be a cinematographer. I am a still photographer (25 years), but after viewing "Green Papaya," I wondered why I hadn't been into film making before. A very simple story, a little Vietnamese girl with an irresistable grin, views the world closely, passionately. Suddenly she ten years older, and finds herself the maiden to the same young man she had a crush on as a little girl.
Rating:
Summary: The Scent of Green Papaya
Review: An engrossing movie that takes us thru the life of a very young girl who becomes a servant in a well-to-do home. Her quiet observance of the family life around her, from the well meaning wife and mother who is endlessly haranged by her bitter mother- in-law as being not-good-enough for her husband, who though well off and bound as a husband and father,yet follows his own path of dissipation that leads to his untimely end and it's tumultuous results on the family... to the spoiled children who menace her job with their pranks, to finally her life as a servant to the grown children and her continued service in this family. Her grace and patience come to fruition finally and one can only exult in the film's outcome.
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Summary: A beautifully crafted debut film...
Review: Anh Hung Tran's The Scent of Green Papaya is a film that appears so outwardly modest in its goals that it is easy to underestimate it. In its own, nearly wordless, way it tells the story of Mui, a poor Vietnamese girl that leaves her family (whom we never see) to act as a middle-class family's servant. Many of the film's early scenes show us Mui's introduction to this new household, as she learns to cook and perform her chores, and as the youngest son of the home taunts her. Mui's character remains relatively mute as she observes the world around her. The film watches her as she delights as ants scurry to retrieve a piece of food, and then contrasts that image with one that shows one of the sons as he drips hot wax onto a group of ants. The moral seems pretty overt here: we should pause to consider even the lowest members of society, rather than antagonize them. Just as it begins to feel too simple for its own good, however, the film leaps ahead ten years. The family, due to financial strain, has to release Mui from their service, and she ends up working for a young conservatory student. The film's politics take on a new dimension here. We notice that her new employer has an apartment that is decorated with western artifacts. He studies at a French academy, where he plays the piano (The film is, tellingly, a co-production of France and Vietnam.). This is in stark contrast to the family that Mui previously worked for. Their music was played on traditional Vietnamese instruments, and their home was a collection of antiques. That the first household has failed becomes another bold political statement here. That the film is able to fully convey political concerns without ever actually having a character utter a word about politics is one of its achievements. That it can do so while remaining completely within the context of Mui's simple life is sheer elegance. Its argument that even the most nonpolitical citizens feel the impact of political change is given an uplifting shot in the arm with the film's ending. The film deservedly won the Camera D'Or at Cannes. It's a stunning first feature. There are many shots that combine several stunning compositions with fluid camera motion. Every time the camera pauses, we expect the shot to end, but it moves deeper into the frame to find something else to look at. I find this sort of filmmaking, which is present in such films as Tarkovsky's The Mirror or Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, somehow purer than most. This style is perfectly suited to a film that slowly reveals layers that would not be apparent to those that were not willing to look more closely at what's on screen.
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Summary: hypnotising film
Review: Every time I have come across this film on my foreign film cable channel, i end up watching it in awe...Even when I have started for another movie!...It is a hypnotising film, beautifully shot...The young leading lady is a tranquil beauty who goes for the heart. A great deal of the film had no dialogue, but needs no narration or explaination. It transcends national origins....I am a fan......Toni Benson.Asheville, N.C.
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