The reactions of everyone from individual critics to entire governments have been strong to Ann Hui's portrait of post-Liberation Vietnam as a land of poverty, tyranny andinsufferable pain. It is the Hong Kong filmmaker's fourth film, following twoslick thrillers and a first "boat person" film, The Story of Woo Viet(1982/PFA 10/86), about a Vietnamese refugee trapped in the Philippines. In BoatPeople, Hui attempts to explain why hundreds of thousands of people have riskedtheir lives to become "boat people" and flee to the supposed safety andfreedom of Hong Kong and the West. She takes as her protagonist and"impartial witness" a Japanese photo-journalist (portrayed by popularChinese actor Lam Chi-cheung) on an extended return to Vietnam as a guest of theCultural Bureau. He is shown the official society, a vision of healthy childrenand prosperity, but his involvement with a single family opens his eyes to astruggle to survive that reduces people to prostitution and scavenging off ofrecently executed corpses. A haunting film that has been both highly praised, andaccused of blatant, anti-communist propaganda, Boat People was made with privateHong Kong funding but shot in Mainland China with the cooperation of the PRCgovernment. It is worth remembering that the film is not a documentary; as NewYork Times critic Janet Maslin notes, "its criticism is very much in theservice of its clear and simple dramatic needs.... Vivid and disturbing asmoments are, they feel like shrewdly calculating fiction rather thanreportage."