Cyclo

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Trân Anh Hùng’s feverish follow-up to The Scent of Green Papaya plunges into post–Đổi Mới Saigon and marked a radical, darker departure for Tony Leung, here conjuring a haunting blend of tortured interiority and taciturn charisma. He plays the Poet, a near-silent gangster orbiting the city’s underworld, who ensnares an orphaned cyclo driver after his bicycle taxi is stolen, coercing the boy into running drugs while the boy’s sister is groomed for prostitution. Shot in 35mm with a gritty immediacy that slips into an increasingly hallucinatory grammar, Cyclo is a ’90s gem that transfigures neon, sweat, and pop music into a punishingly sad fever dream, with Leung’s tight-lipped performance—all eyes and pensive cigarette drags—at its center. 35mm film print generously provided by the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries and Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts.