Admission Free -- Tickets available at PFA box office beginning April 9

Set during the six months leading to the fall of Saigon in 1975, this fine British feature, made for Thames T.V., captures the atmosphere of a
colonial community on the verge of extinction, lulled into a deceptive calm before the storm that would sweep all foreign interests from the city. Judi Dench plays a forty-ish British bank employee who has chosen the vagaries of the European community in Saigon over a grey existence in Britain. She meets and falls in love with an American CIA agent, Frederic Forrest, whose combination of myopia and determination educates her as to the nature of the American presence in Vietnam.
Against the monumental events that threaten them, these characters
emerge as decidedly real human beings, their affair is touching in its
equal measures of confusion and desire. Glamor doesn't enter into this
remarkably understated picture. E.G. Marshall is excellent as the American ambassador who trusts too long in a negotiated settlement and is forced to lead a chaotic retreat. (Featured at the London Film Festival, 1983.)