A love affair with languor

Tran Anh Hung is a director who effortlessly defies categorization. While his films -- "The Scent of Green Papaya" and "Cyclo" -- are invariably described as Vietnamese, it's a Vietnam filtered through the sensibility of European art cinema. But, completing the loop, his cinematic style is obviously infused with an intensely Asian aesthetic in every aspect, in his use of color, sound, design and pace.

Tran -- Vietnamese by birth, but raised in France from the age of 12 -- walks that line between two cultures and offers us a singular perspective; he rediscovers his homeland with every film, close enough to it to be alert to the minutest details, but distanced enough to take a hazy, impressionistic and highly personal view.

Where "Papaya" was a tranquil memory of childhood wonder in prewar Saigon (painstakingly re-created on a French soundstage) and "Cyclo" a harsh and hallucinatory nightmare of urban despair in present-day Saigon, Tran's latest, "a la verticale de l'ete (The Vertical Ray of the Sun)," is an afternoon daydream on the torpid allure of Hanoi. After the chaos of shooting "Cyclo" in bustling Saigon, Tran took a holiday break in Hanoi, where, he says, he found himself "attracted to the unique, laid-back flow of time." This mellow pace, combined with childhood memories of sweltering summer siestas, gave birth to "a la verticale."