Owl and the Sparrow

Orphaned ten-year-old country girl Thuy (Pham) flees rural Bien Hoa for the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. In another kind of movie, her fate would be a dismal one. But in Vietnam-born, U.S.-raised filmmaker Stephane Gauger’s sweet-natured fairy tale, a lost child can broker redemptive romance between two lonely adults: a heartbroken zookeeper (Le), recently jilted by his fiancée, and a stewardess (Cat) who’s mired in a dead-end relationship. Sentimental without being cloying, the film is a charmer, just like the gravely wide-eyed Pham.