When Mui dresses in the clothes her former mistress gave her, even painting her lips with lipstick, Khuyen notices her, but the camera reveals not her entrance into modern Vietnam but her connection with the garden. Shots of her inside and out through latticed windows reveal how her beauty aligns with that of nature. Close-ups of rainwater juxtaposed with the shower in which Mui washes her hair reinforce this connection. When Khuyen enters her room, he sees the cricket and hears frogs before noting her beauty.
Although Mui does break up Khuyen’s romantic relationship, the film suggests he has chosen well. Mui writes, “In my garden, there is a papaya tree where papaya hang in bunches.” To illustrate her words, she washes and prepares a papaya, slicing it, revealing the seeds in extreme close-up, and picking out one she places on Khuyen’s plate.
These close-ups of an open white-seeded papaya juxtapose with shots of a now-pregnant Mui further connecting human and nonhuman nature in the film. The last lines she reads during a literacy lesson reinforce this connection. Now “cherry trees are gripped in shadow” and the end is announced atop a statue of Buddha. The Scent of Green Papaya shows us what an ideal middle place might look like, if only in a fictional narrative and a visually poetic film.
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