Review of The White Silk Dress

The White Silk Dress is a beautiful and tragic film. It is pretty much depressing throughout the whole thing, and everyone suffers a lot. It takes place in Vietnam with two servants who are in love who lead very oppressed lives and have cruel masters who are allied with the French. Then the Communist revolutionaries come around and kill the rich people; so the lovers are finally free to be together… They go to the south to start a new life and escape the poverty they've always known. But they stay poor, and raise a family entirely of daughters. The couple works hard and still can't seem to earn enough, but just enough to survive. Then there are all the major floods and natural disasters that just add more to their suffering. Things seem okay despite their poverty, until the girls reach the age in which they must wear white silk dresses to go to school, and the family doesn't have enough to buy silk. It gets even worse from then, if that's possible. There's the war between the U.S. and the Vietnamese Communist government, with violent interrogations and bombings. Tragedies abound, and it is just really depressing because everyone in the family loves each other so much, and they all lead such sad, sad, lives.