Set in a breath-taking primitive landscape in the mountainous provinces of Vietnam, the film tells the story of a Hmong tribe girl named Pao. She was raised by her stepmother, for her real mother left her when she was little. One day, her stepmother dies in an accident, and she begins to track down...
A soldier (Hien) survives the war and comes back to live with his brother's family (Tien). He can't seem to adjust to civilian life after the war and feels increasingly alienated from other people, whom he finds calculating, selfish and materialistic.
The portrayal of the group of women in the story as driven to a kind of hysteria after three years of isolated living at an army supply depot “deep in the ghostly arms of the forest” suggests the ways the war traumatized even those not involved directly in the actual fighting. The “laughing...
