When the Tenth Month Comes

Golden Lotus, 1985 Vietnam Film Festival
Special Jury Prize, 1985 Hawaii International Film Festival

After Duyên learns her husband died at war in Cambodia, she drowns the secret inside herself, hiding it from everyone including her family. When local schoolteacher and poet Khang discovers her secret though, Duyên solicits his help to write letters as her husband to carry on the lie. However, Duyên’s reality blurs as grief begins to bleed into every facet of her life.

A deceptively simple story, WHEN THE TENTH MONTH COMES draws upon lyricism to accentuate compounding sorrow. Swirls of the human world and afterlife bind together for a supernatural reunion between husband and wife. Slivers of chèo, Northern Vietnamese opera, parallel reality. The peaceful countryside shifts between a quiet mourning and an unrequited romance. Kites are offered to the village spirit as poignant closure and renewed hope. The movie’s subjective glances of post-war life complicate martyrdom with a swelling empathy for the civilians who live on.

During a time between palpable governmental presence in film and renovation reforms, director Đặng Nhật Minh creatively evokes poetry and Vietnamese traditions to highlight the residual effects of a country branded by wars. Deemed as the greatest Vietnamese film of all time, WHEN THE TENTH MONTH COMES is a melancholic black and white dream that illustrates wavering grief braided into the everyday with compassionate optimism for the future.

– Alissa Tu