The Scent of Green Papaya (Mùi du du xanh). Tran Anh Hung, 1993.
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Edition screened: Lorber Blu-ray, released 2011. Vietnamese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: Torture of insects and reptiles.
Details:
1) At 18:30 the older of the two boys prepares to torture ants by dripping candle wax on them. The actual event occurs at 19:40, with an extreme close-up of the intentional engulfing by wax. They struggle to free themselves before dying. He does it again at 40:50. Another scene implies that he also kills frogs with a slingshot (close-up of frog in idyllic setting, cut to boy with readied slingshot), but the actual event is not depicted.
2) At 25:00 the younger of the two boys menaces gentle young Mui with a chameleon hanged by the neck on a string attached to a stick. The chameleon does not show signs of life.
For the most part, this is a beautiful and meditative film about a young girl’s appreciative, naturally mystic relationship with the world around her. I am somewhat disgusted that her days and my viewing experience are maliciously uglified by the two repulsive boys in the family, the older one menially cruel, the younger one spielbergianly obnoxious through the entire film. I am angered to imagine that viewers of this film will look at one another, shake their heads a bit, smile whimsically, and agree that boys will be boys after all. No, NO. Films will teach boys to be cruel, and will teach the rest of us to be stupidly accepting of that learned behavior so that our own degenerate family members might be similarly excused.