Fooled by Love: Việt Kiều Intimacy in Charlie Nguyen’s Để Mai Tính (2010)

Abstract

This essay examines the portrayal of returning overseas Vietnamese (Việt kiều) in Charlie Nguyen’s romantic comedy Để Mai tính (Fool for Love, 2010). I call this conflictual relationship with Vietnamese nationals Việt kiều intimacy. This intimacy is marked by disgust and desire, past and future: they are far away and too close. The Việt kiều’s upward and outward mobility speaks to global capitalism’s enticing opportunities, a mobility that is explicitly linked to the Việt kiều characters’ non-normative sexual-gender expressions. At the same time, that the two film characters’ career aspirations are complicated and curtailed by sex and romance suggests that the Việt kiều’s mobility is compromised by their stubborn affective attachment to “Vietnam.” The rich affective, temporal and spatial dimensions of Việt kiều intimacy confirms that the intimate, far from being discretely tucked away in the private realm, non-commodified and physically bounded, is inevitably linked to the public sphere, economic aims and national interests.