Drama reflects the culture that produces it, but there are certain characteristics of drama which may be found across different cultures, themes which are simply human and not tied to a particular culture. My own ethic background is Vietnamese, and I understand the nature of that culture when it is reflected in drama on stage or screen. A recent film from Vietnam is The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993), and while the themes and treatment are distinctively Vietnamese in nature, there is much about the film that is echoed in the Swedish drama Miss Julie by August Strindberg.
The main character in The Scent of Green Papaya is a 10-year-old girl from the country who becomes a servant for a family living in Saigon on the 1950s. There are major differences that have to be faced by the girl between living in the city and living in the country. She has much to learn about, and even though she is a servant, she does have this chance to learn about the family, about the city, about this kind of world as opposed to the one in which she was raised. This does not mean this is a rich family with no problems, and indeed the fortunes of the family begin to decline once the father leaves so that the girl. This film is more like a play than some because it is so closely tied to the interior of this family's home. As the girl develops as a woman and a human being, she becomes involved with the young musician in the next house in which she lives, and the affair between the two of them becomes the subject matter for much of the story. The servant girl becomes part of a triangle, for the young musician has a fiancTe who is jealous of the servant girl even before she and the musician begin their affair. The fiancTe does finally leave once that affair begins, and she leaves behind her former betrothed and the servant girl to do whatever they want now that they are alone.
The world in which this takes place is a patriarchal world v...