Ru: Immigration Drama a Love Letter to Canada

By Liz Braun

Rating: A

Award-winning author Kim Thuy calls Ru her love letter to Canadians.

Thuy came to Canada as a child as one of the “boat people” who fled Vietnam in the 1970s after the fall of Saigon.

Her experience was captured in her 2009 best-selling memoir, Ru; a new film version of Ru, which had its world premiere at TIFF last fall, is in theatres here this week. (The Quebec-set tale opened in that province in November, where it has smashed box-office records.)

Directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud, Ru is a deeply engaging family drama told from a child’s point of view. It’s a story of refugees and rebirth, but the heart of it is that child’s journey to becoming an artist.

The action in Ru flashes back and forth in time and place between Saigon and rural Quebec, focussing on a little girl named Tihn (newcomer Chloe Djandji) as her family exits Vietnam and ends up across the planet in Canada.

Tihn, her parents (played by Jean Bui and Chantal Thuy) and her two little brothers leave extended family and their happy, prosperous lives behind when they flee Saigon. Their past is told in flashback, snippets of memory as Tihn adjusts to life in Canada and is reminded of incidents from home.

Here is the family home in Saigon, an elegant oasis of calm, walls lined with books. Now the house is a hive of activity as the adults gather their valuables and prepare to leave; soon enough, soldiers are looting the place. Then the action moves to Quebec, and the culture shock is stunning.

With French their common language, the good people of Granby, Quebec welcome the Vietnamese refugees in a church hall with gifts of food and clothing. Every newcomer is matched with a sponsor family charged with helping smooth the adjustment to a new land.

Through Tihn’s eyes, this adjustment is monumental. She is a quiet but keenly observant little girl, and to her, ordinary events in Quebec seem staggering — a weeping bride glimpsed in a hotel corridor, a colourful parrot somehow living in the family’s new apartment, the blinding whiteness of a vast, snow-covered place.

Guiding her and her family are their Canadian sponsors, wonderfully brought to life by Patrice Robitaille, Karine Vanasse and Mali Corbeil Gauvreau; enter poutine and snowshoes.

As Tihn’s family begins to adjust to life in Canada, her memories of leaving Vietnam become darker. She has witnessed terrible things and experienced a harrowing ocean voyage and time in a refugee camp.

Everything from the past that is dark and dangerous and claustrophobic stands in stark contrast to the light and beauty of the Canadian landscape; Ru is a visually enchanting film. On the subject of love letters, the way filmmaker Michaud and cinematographer Jean-Francois Lord present the places and people of Quebec in the ‘70s will make you proud to be Canadian.

Ru. Written by Charles-Olivier Michaud and Jacques Davidts. Directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud. Starring Chloe Djandji and Chantal Thuy. In theatres January 26.