Metacritic reviews

Here is a film so placid and filled with sweetness that watching it is like listening to soothing music.

Anyone who thinks nothing is happening in The Scent of Green Papaya-in the absence of car chases, rapes, gunfights and whatever else we may now demand from our entertainment-is obviously not paying attention. [11 Mar 1994, p.D]

The Scent of Green Papaya, a film as delicate and evocative as its name, recognizes that out of illusion can come reality.

The Scent of Green Papaya is an astonishingly rich evocation of maternal energies and gestures, expressed in lovingly lingered-on images. [25 Feb 1994, p.47]

Lush, succulent, verdant, aromatic. These are the kind of words that come to mind when describing this new Vietnamese film, a film dominated by textures rather than plot.

The Scent of Green Papaya is made all the more enchanting by its simplicity.

Delicately flavored as much by the inherent appeal of its classic Cinderella-like story as by its pictorial beauty, The Scent of Green Papaya is a lovely experience in the dreamily exotic.

Scent is a captured memory, a living, breathing reverie rather than a narrative. It's also the birth of a great talent.

The main focus is on everyday household chores and sensual discoveries, all made mesmerizing by elaborately choreographed camera movements that link interiors and exteriors in the same fluid itineraries.

At first, the movie's restraint is enticing, and even soothing. By the end, though, Tran's strategies have an enervating, numbing effect. The same methods he uses to pull us in finally kill our interest.