The setup sounds a bit like The Bicycle Thieves, with a poor Saigon teenager getting his rented bicycle-taxi stolen by a group of gangsters. I was pretty sure this was going to be a film of the "sucks-to-be-poor" genre so common throughout foreign cinema, but Cyclo veers into much darker territory. The teen is forced into crime by the woman from whom he rented the bike, and falls in with a gang she operates (lead by Chinese actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai, the most familiar actor in the cast). Meanwhile, the teen's sister gets involved with Tony Leung, as well, becoming his girlfriend, as well as his prostitute. The film plays this all as a nightmare, which it doesn't spell out all at once. The shift in tone from neorealist to abstract is at first difficult to perceive. Much like its characters' dilemma, the film sneaks up on the viewer and catches you from behind. You never know what's hitting you. The hypnotic mood engrossed me completely. The film reminds me a lot of the work of Tsai Ming-Liang, one of my favorite modern directors. This vision is actually more horrifying than any of Tsai's films. Where Tsai stresses loneliness in the big city, Tran makes Saigon feel overcrowded and the mood is akin to paranoia.
