Vietnamese cinema seeks to exploit "treasure"

Bringing fairy tales and folk tales to the big screen, if done well, will contribute to building indigenous culture for Vietnamese cinema.

The film "Con Cam" by director Tran Huu Tan is a horror version, inspired by the fairy tale "Tam Cam". This film is expected to be released in September 2024.

Mostly successful

The film "Con Cam" brings together the actors: Lam Thanh My, Rima Thanh Vy, Thuy Diem, Quoc Cuong, Hai Nam, Meritorious Artist Ngoc Hiep, Mai The Hiep... The film revolves around Cam - Tam's half-sister. The film also has many creative characters and details, evoking a feeling of both strangeness and familiarity for the audience.

The movie “Con Cam” is a horror version of the fairy tale “Tam Cam”. (Photo provided by the producer)

Vietnamese cinema once had the movie "Tam Cam: The Untold Story" directed by Ngo Thanh Van, released in theaters in 2016, also inspired by this famous fairy tale. The movie revolves around family conflicts, the struggle between good and evil; it earned 66.5 billion VND in revenue, a stable profit compared to the production budget of 22 billion VND.

In 2019, audiences enjoyed the film "Trang Quynh" by director Duc Thinh, adapted from a folk tale in the treasure trove of Vietnamese fairy tales and folklore. The film earned 100 billion VND but also caused controversy over its content.

In 2023, the movie "Chi chi em em 2" by director Vu Ngoc Dang was released to serve the audience. This movie was inspired by legendary characters and famous folk tales related to the beauties Ba Tra and Tu Nhi. The movie earned more than 121 billion VND in revenue.

Movies that exploit fairy tales, folklore or legendary characters, creating anecdotes that are passed down by word of mouth, are mostly successful in terms of revenue. The only unfortunate case is the movie "Trang Ti: Phieu Luu Ky" directed by Phan Gia Nhat Linh, adapted from the comic book "Than Dong Dat Viet" by artist Le Linh. This movie failed in revenue due to objective factors.

People in the industry believe that Vietnamese fairy tales and folk tales are a "treasure" of cinema, with great potential for exploitation. Because these stories are very familiar to people of all ages. The familiarity and popularity of the original story is a strong point for filmmakers to use in the process of promoting their works. Familiarity is also an advantage and strength for filmmakers to boldly choose and create new versions from fairy tales and folk tales.

"The story of Tam Cam is very familiar to Vietnamese people, almost everyone remembers the details of this fairy tale. Therefore, when making the horror version of Tam Cam, I don't think I will encounter any difficulties. On the contrary, this is an advantage because many people are curious and expect how this version will be told, what new creative points it will have compared to the original story" - director Tran Huu Tan commented.

Familiar and new

Bringing fairy tales and folk tales to cinema has many advantages, and the revenue is also good, but up to now, this film genre is still very modest. Only "Tam Cam" has been exploited for fairy tales; and folk tales, characters, and legendary anecdotes that have been made into films can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The reason given is due to the great challenges and difficulties arising from investment capital, creativity, and other objective risks.

Experts say that films inspired by fairy tales, folk tales, legendary characters, etc., if told too much, changing the entire content structure, only keeping the character names, will easily be counterproductive because the audience will find it too unfamiliar and difficult to accept. However, if the story is close to the original, easy to predict, and has nothing new, it will not be attractive. At a moderate level, the work ensures harmony between familiarity and novelty, which is considered okay, but this type of film is not easy to make.

A big obstacle for this genre of film is that the investment capital is often many times higher than other films in terms of setting, costumes, special effects... Director Duc Thinh believes that making historical films is 10 times more difficult than other genres, because Vietnamese cinema does not have a studio, lacks costumes, materials as well as many other factors.

Producer and director Ngo Thanh Van once revealed that she spent up to 2 billion VND on costumes alone for the film "Tam Cam: The Untold Story". Choosing actors is not easy. Each audience has different imaginations and thoughts about fairy tale, folk, and legendary characters. Filmmakers must research and make efforts to choose actors who are closest to the audience's imagination. Differences can easily lead to conflicting opinions and if there is too much controversy, it will more or less affect the work in a way that filmmakers can hardly foresee.

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