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Clip description
Trang (Deborah Le) gets ready for school but her mother Trieu (Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hien) asks her to stay home and help Uncle Le (Hieu Phan) in their garage garment factory. Trang’s year 12 brother Vu (Jazz Ly) offers to help but Trieu sends him to school.
Curator’s notes
This sequence introduces the film’s central premise and main character relationships. It also establishes Trang’s perspective, in both a narrative and visual sense. The story largely sticks with Trang as she moves from location to location. While there are many close-ups of her, most other characters are shot from further away. Stephen Rae’s score is also interesting in this respect, foregrounded at moments where Trang is solitary or contemplative, at other times submerged by environmental sounds, including the radio which provides Uncle Le with the material for funny pop-cultural misquotations.
The relationship between Trang and her brother Vu is one of Delivery Day’s lovely aspects. Of all the characters, Vu is best placed to understand Trang’s feelings, although in these early scenes he doesn’t show it. In this scene their easy shifting between English and Vietnamese dialogue captures the film’s theme of the ‘hybrid’ experience.
Trang’s mother Trieu is played by screenwriter Khoa Do’s mother, who herself has a background in the garment industry. While a number of cast members have backgrounds in theatre, Deborah Le, Jazz Ly and Hieu Phan were first time actors. Le and Ly were scouted from schools, Hieu Phan answered a casting call published in a community newspaper. They worked with Nico Lathouris, who was also dramaturg on Blue Murder (1995), Wildside (1997–99) and Heartbreak High (1993–99). Do acted as a translator for the actors and director Jane Manning in the rehearsal and shooting process. Jazz Ly later appeared in Little Fish (2005), also produced by Liz Watts.
