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Lê Minh Hoàng (director), Saigon in the Rain, 2020.

—Written on a rainless Saigon day

Urban life has long provided cinema with a stage upon which to capture the tension between aspiration and precarity. Cities embody both dazzling opportunity and unforgiving struggle, making them fertile ground for filmmakers from Wong Kar-wai in Chungking Express (1994) to Damien Chazelle in La La Land (2016). Within the twin challenges of developing both the nation itself and its cinema, Lê Minh Hoàng’s Saigon in the Rain (2020) emerges as a youthful yet fragile testament to what it means to live, love, and migrate within the ever-shifting fabric of Saigon. Though the film suffers from narrative looseness and uneven performances, it succeeds in translating the rhythms of urban migration and cultural hybridity into a cinematic language that is both romantic and sociologically rich.

The film centres on Vũ, a musician who migrates from Hanoi to Saigon, and Mây, a woman from Phú Yên who has long struggled to establish herself in the metropolis. Their romance unfolds alongside the struggles of the indie band Bồng Bềnh, whose attempt to survive in a pop-saturated market parallels the precarious position of migrants seeking belonging in an unfamiliar city. Saigon, in this sense, is not merely a backdrop but an active character, mediating their aspirations, failures, and fleeting intimacies.

Migration here functions as both social reality and metaphor. Scholars of urbanism often describe cities as “contact zones” (Pratt, 1992), where identities are negotiated through flows of labour, culture, and capital. Saigon, like many Southeast Asian cities, has been shaped by successive waves of rural-to-urban migration. As communication practices shape urban culture, the film reflects this process not through statistics or policy, but through the eyes of young lovers. Vũ embodies the Northern migrant striving to assert an artistic identity, while Mây represents the Southern migrant who has already endured the compromises of survival. Their relationship dramatises the emotional costs of integration—the yearning for intimacy in the midst of economic precarity.

Visually, the film resists the frenetic energy often associated with urban cinema. Cinematographer Nguyễn Khắc Nhật, noted for his dynamic style in Ròm (2019), adopts a deliberate stillness here. Wide, static shots of rain-soaked intersections and motorbike-filled avenues emphasise not chaos but coexistence. Saigon is depicted less as an overwhelming metropolis than as a lived space in which migrants, lovers, and workers quietly negotiate their place. This aesthetic choice resonates with Henri Lefebvre’s notion of “the right to the city” (1996), where urban space is not merely material but experiential, continually reshaped by those who inhabit it.

Casting decisions further mirror Saigon’s migrant character. As journalist Trác Thúy Miêu observes, Saigon is defined by its openness to newcomers rather than by any singular origin. Hoàng’s choice of Avin Lu, with his Northern accent, and Hồ Thu Anh, whose faltering Southern intonation betrays Northern roots despite years in the city, encapsulates the resilience demanded of adaptation. Their presence reminds viewers that “being Saigonese” is less about birthright than about shared participation in the city’s mosaic of identities. Yet the inexperience of the cast reveals the fragility of representation: while the central chemistry feels authentic, secondary characters remain underdeveloped, echoing how many urban migrants remain peripheral in the collective imagination.

What elevates Saigon in the Rain beyond conventional romance is its use of music as both narrative and urban metaphor. The band’s struggles resonate with the challenges faced by alternative voices in a market dominated by mainstream pop, much as migrants strive to be heard in an overcrowded city. The central theme, Đàn Chim Di Cư (“Migratory Birds”), explicitly invokes imagery of movement, flight, and uncertainty. Its sweeping vocal range mirrors the precarious balance of longing and instability that defines youth migration. By opting for a rock ballad rather than a commercial genre, Hoàng resists commodification, privileging authenticity over conformity—an artistic parallel to the migrant’s pursuit of dignity amid structural pressures.

Still, the film’s script exposes its limitations. Secondary storylines—romances within the band and their supposed artistic breakthrough—remain unresolved, leaving emotional gaps. Yet this incompleteness may be read less as failure than as reflection: urban life itself rarely yields neat conclusions. Migration stories often hover between arrival and departure, hope and disillusion. Hoàng’s film, whether intentionally or not, mirrors this open-endedness.

Saigon in the Rain is less concerned with cinematic perfection than with articulating a youthful migrant’s voice. It captures the precarious yet beautiful process of making a home in a city that never wholly belongs to anyone. For me, watching this film on quiet, rain-drenched afternoons in Saigon is not about discovering a masterpiece but about recognising resonance. The city embraces its youth—sometimes harshly, sometimes tenderly—yet always with a rhythm that etches itself into both our dreams and our scars.

_{How to cite: Po, Red. “Lê Minh Hoàng’s Saigon in the Rain: A Resonance of Youth, Migration, and Urban Dreams.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 27 Aug. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/08/27/saigon-rain.}

Studying Arts and Media Studies at Fulbright University Vietnam, Red Po is a dedicated multimedia storyteller with a strong foundation in project management, academic research, and cultural studies. He has produced award-winning short films, organised large-scale events, and led cross-cultural projects both within Vietnam and internationally. Fascinated by the transience of youth, urban disquiet, and the shadows of memory in cinema, he explores how personal and collective experiences are shaped and reimagined through storytelling.

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