VIETNAMESE TALE OF TANGLED LOVE GETS A VENICE SCREENING

       A Vietnamese story of tangled love that explores changing social values in the traditional communist nation, has been screened at the Venice Film Festival in a rare mark of recognition for the country's film industry.
       "Choi Vio" ("Adrift")sketches a modern Vietnam where ancestral Confucian values, centred around the family, are increasingly replaced by individualism.
       The film shows people caught up in complex games of seduction and knocks down traditional moral markers of the society. Scriptwriter Phan Dang Ki says it blurs the boundaries between good and bad while also touching on homosexuality, a subject still largely taboo in Vietnam.
       Di has tackled controversial subjects before.
       His short film "Khi toi 20" ("When I am 20") was shown in Venice last year but the Vietnamese censor judged it too "crude" and prevented him from attending.
       It told the story of a young prostitute who uses her earnings to support her grandmother.
       "Choi Voi" was not censored-even though it contains themes that could aggravate the authorities-but four years were needed to convince them to partially finance the production,says Di.
       He and the director of "Choi Voi", Bui Thac Chuyen, are among the very few members of Vietnam's film industry to receie international recognition.
       In 2006, Chuyen presented a feature film, "Living in Fear", at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
       But Vietnamese cinema is still most widely known through its overseas-based directors including Tran Anh Hung, who live in Frandsce. He won the Golden Camera at Cannes in 1993 for "The Scent of Green Papaya", and then received a Golden Lion at Venice two years later with "Cyclo".
       The country's cinema was for a long time at the nearly exclusive service of the regime's propagandists and films were made, chuyen says,"without regard for the interests of audiences".
       Things began to change several years ago with the arrival of private-secto rfunding.
       Vietnamese audiences,especially int he big cities,have started to return and cinema has begun to be profitable,says Chuyen.
       The industry remains in need of financing but Chuyen says he hasn't ost hope of seeing his country's cinema follow the model of South Korea, whose films are recognised around the world.
       "Twenty years ago, South Korean cinema resembled Vietnam's today," he says.
       At the 66th Venice festival, which opened Wednesday, "Choi Voi" will be screened in a category featuring new trends in world cinema.
       The film's first festival screening was yesterday, but Chuyen says later commercial release at home will be a challenge because of the tastes of Vietnamese audiences.
       Chuyen and Di both recognise that although audiences are back, they do not necessarily want to watch a film like "Choi Voi".
       "People prefer american and South Korean films or commercial films" in general. Di says
       undeterred, he carries on.
       Like last year, Di was unable to attend the Venice screening. But this time it's because he is preparing to make a new film.