By Fan Huang, Daily Californian
The 32nd annual Center for Asian American Media Festival kicks off its opening-night film with a Vietnamese romantic comedy, “How to Fight in Six Inch Heels.” A fashion comedy in the same vein as Western mainstream films such as “The Devil Wears Prada,” the film tells the story of Anne (Kathy Uyen), a fashion designer in the cutthroat New York City fashion industry. When her fiance Kiet (Petey Majik Nguyen) receives a promotion that forces him to work overseas in Vietnam, she suspects him of cheating after seeing a pair of red stilettos in the background of a video chat, almost mocking her as she plans her marriage.
Vietnamese film How to Fight in Six Inch Heels (Am Muu Giay Got Nhon). Photo from The Australian.
Furious at her fiance, Anne decides to fly to Vietnam and discover who his secret lover is. After an interesting turn of events that involves her replacing another model, she becomes a runway model with the help of a short and feisty makeup designer Danny (Don Nguyen) and her improvisational skills. High-strung and meticulous with her craft, Anne discovers the models working with Kiet’s company and makes a carefully planned chart to find and expose one of them.
Kathy Uyen, a San Jose native, is striking and effective in her role as Anne. She is both charming and spontaneous as she stripteases for her fiance over the webcam and later, when she runs frantically through the streets of Saigon in her high heels. In order to access the Saigon fashion industry, Anne befriends several supermodels while Danny trains her for her runway show. As Anne becomes displaced from her tightly organized and regimented lifestyle in New York City, she starts to become cognizant of her own naivete and overbearing nature.
Director Ham Tran made his directorial debut in 2006 with “Journey From the Fall,” a critically successful independent film depicting the Vietnamese boat refugees during the fall of Saigon with gritty realism. “How to Fight in Six Inch Heels,” however, presents a younger and more modern portrait of Vietnam, with characters video chatting on their product-placed tablets and smartphones. This is the industrializing and metropolitan Vietnam that represents the growing middle class with increased adoption of Western styles, conventions and consumer culture.
Read the full article by Fan Huang from the Daily Californian.
