A Tale of Love

Trinh T. Minh-ha

An experimental film that portrays the experience of a Vietnamese immigrant woman in love. Session that is part of the retrospective dedicated to the feminist and decolonialist scholar that accompanies the exhibition Seen Yet Unseen.

This fifth feature film by Trinh T. Minh-ha is loosely inspired by The Tale of Kieu, a love poem that the Vietnamese consider a mythical biography of their homeland, crossed by internal conflicts and foreign domination. The film follows the search for Kieu, a freelance writer in love, who poses as a model for a photographer who idealizes the female body and portrays her wrapped in transparent veils. Voyeurism, a practice that runs through love narratives, functions here as one of the threads that structure the “narrative” of the film.

By revealing the fiction of love in romantic stories and its consumption, A Tale of Love sets aside traditional narrative conventions and opens up a denatured space of performance where represented reality, memory and dream constantly merge. Sublimely beautiful, A Tale of Love eloquently evokes the strength of allusive connections between love, sensuality, voyeurism and identity. 

Running time: 108' 

Year: 1996 

Version: VOSE