“Let’s do this.”
What’s it all about? Mai, a traditional ribbon dancer from the Vietnam countryside, travels to Saigon hoping to be admitted to the national dance academy. After failing to impress the judges at her audition, Mai befriends a hip hop dancer named Kim and becomes involved with a dance crew of street kids called Saigon Fresh. SAIGON ELECTRIC stars Van Trang as Mai and Quynh Hoa as Kim.
My mother likes three types of movies: 1) street dance movies, 2) surfing movies, 3) anything with Johnny Depp. If there was a movie where Johnny Depp was a professional surfer by day and a street-dancing B-boy by night, I’m pretty sure my mother would never leave her house; She would just watch the DVD on repeat all day and I would have to bring her food.
Because of her this, my mother has an encyclopaedic knowledge of street dance films, a knowledge that has somehow trickled down to me. When I was watching SAIGON ELECTRIC, I saw the ribbon dancer and knew that the film would be one part SAVE THE LAST DANCE or STREETDANCE 3D. And then the crew’s community centre became in trouble and, there we go, SAIGON ELECTRIC became one part HONEY. Oh, and if we want to throw in another reference, SAIGON ELECTRIC is also one part PRETTY IN PINK — but that isn’t a dance movie. Or is it?
Though there isn’t nearly as many dance-offs as there should be, SAIGON ELECTRIC is a welcome addition to my mother’s collection on street dance films. The film has at its centre a rich friendship between the sweet, ribbon-dancing Mai and the rebellious, street-wise Kim. Unfortunately, their friendship is pushed to the side to give screen-time to their romantic relationships with, respectively, Saigon Fresh’s captain Do-Boy (Ha Pham Anh Hien) and Hai (Khuong Ngoc), who is basically Andrew McCarthy in PRETTY IN PINK. The middle section of SAIGON ELECTRIC is where these relationships are developed and its slow-moving and nearly entirely devoid of street dance. It’s somewhat disappointing when that’s what you’ve signed up for, but the stories are still appealing. In American street dance films, the dancing is at the forefront and the characters and story suffer for it. With SAIGON ELECTRIC, it’s the opposite, and that’s nothing really to complain about.
And with any dance movie, there’s an obscene amount of Adidas shoes. Snoop Dogg would be so proud.
Notes: Directed by Stephane Gauger; Starring Van Trang, Quynh Hoa, Ha Pham Anh Hien, Khuong Ngoc.
