A melodrama tamed by its theme of suppressed passions and quiet grief, When the Tenth Month Comes tells of a young woman who journeys to the front to visit her soldier husband, only to learn that he has been killed. She decides to conceal the sad news, seemingly indefinitely, from her in-laws, with whom she lives. To this end, she persuades the village schoolmaster to assist her by composing letters in the husband's name. The degree to which she believes them herself is revealed only gradually. Meanwhile, their association starts tongues wagging among the local busy-bodies and self-righteous party members, and the schoolmaster is forced to relocate. A cross between The Return of Martin Guerre and Cyrano de Bergerac-with a bit of All That Heaven Allows thrown in for good measure-When the Tenth Month Comes is nevertheless uniquely Vietnamese in its poetics. The film slips with ease into the folkloric when the heroine rendezvous with her dead husband on the midsummer Day of Forgiveness. "When the tenth month comes...I will leave behind/All these long days of hope that sorrow yields," reads a poem that figures into the story. The subtext also is unique, dealing as it does with the burdens of Vietnamese women which are only increased by the need to stifle emotions in the environment of war.