Actress Hong Anh stars as Hanh in Trang noi day gieng (The Moon at the Bottom of the Well)

The award-winning Vietnamese film Trang noi day gieng (Moon at the Bottom of the Well) was well-received by an audience at New York University (NYU) last week.

Trang noi day gieng tells the story of Hanh, a high school teacher in Hue city who leads a seemingly happy married life with her husband Phuong, her school’s principal. But troubles begin when Hanh is unable to bear children.

To give her husband the child he wants, Hanh arranges for him to have a baby with another woman. But when this secret gets out, Phuong’s career is destroyed.

To protect her husband, Hanh sacrifices their marriage only to find out he has been scheming the whole time. Lost and alone, Hanh finds solace in the world of deities and spirits.

Hong Anh’s portrayal of Hanh won her the Best Actress award in the Asian category at the 2008 Dubai International Film Festival.

Back home, the film took the Silver Kite award for the Best Feature at the 2008 Golden Kite Awards, Vietnam’s premier film awards.

Many Vietnamese-American students and Vietnamese nationals living in New York went to the screening at NYU.

Speaking with the audience after the show, director Nguyen Vinh Son said he’d wanted through this film to capture the people of Hue, a very special part of Vietnam in his opinion.

He said the tolerance of the main character would be considered exceptional nowadays and that the feudal concept of a dominant husband and submissive wife was becoming obsolete in Vietnam.

The New York movie-goers reacted positively to the film and were full of praise for Hong Anh’s performance though not, given the modern context, for the way her character succumbs to her fate.

Trang noi day gieng will be shown at five more US universities including George Mason, UC Irvine and UC Berkeley before the tour concludes on April 22.

Reported by Le Quang