Filling the 581-seat theatre to the brim and requiring an extra dozen chairs, the audience at Saigon Performing Arts Center in Fountain Valley on Thursday gave the film Fool for Love (in Vietnamese: “Để Mai Tính”) a huge success of a U.S. premiere, providing its distributors with hope that the theatrical release this weekend will also be successful.

The romantic comedy, written and starring Dustin Nguyen (of 21 Jump Street fame) opens across the country today September 10.

Distributed in the U.S. by Wave Releasing, Fool For Love is directed by Charlie Nguyen, the director of The Rebel (Dòng Máu Anh Hùng), also starring Dustin Nguyen.

At the premiere: The film's star Kathy Uyen, and rap artist Antoneus Maximus who sang the film's theme song "Em so đẹp"

When The Rebel opened in Vietnam in 2007, it broke the country’s box office record. When Fool for Love came out earlier this year, it broke Vietnam’s box office record of its time too.

Fool for Love was shot in Saigon, Nha Trang and Ha Noi. The film follows the travails of earnest ballroom clerk Dung (Dustin Nguyen) as he falls in love and quits his job at a five-star hotel to pursue the affections of a beautiful lounge singer, Mai (Kathy Uyen). In his quest to track down the girl at a beach resort, comedy ensues as the penniless clerk is forced to shack up with a very rich businessman (Thai Hoa) looking for male companionship.

The film’s media kit promises that it will “leave() you laughing out loud while tugging your heart strings in one man’s pursuit of true love.”

Kathy Uyen, a Vietnamese-American from OC, previously starred in a string of Victor Vu-helmed movies, one of which (Passport to Love – Chuyện Tình Xa Xứ) won her the equivalent of a Vietnamese Oscar.

Writer and star Dustin Nguyen

Wave Releasing is a distribution company dedicated to promoting works by Vietnamese-American filmmakers. Among its founders is Timothy Linh Bui, the director of the refugee film Green Dragon, and also of a cool little human-rights-for-Myanmar PSA spot starring Tila Tequila.

Fool for Love is shown at these theaters starting September 10:

Orange County (California): Edwards Westminster 10; Regal Garden Grove 16.
Dallas (Texas- Garland) : AMC Firewheel 18.
Dallas (Texas-Grand Prairie): Cinemark Movies 16.
Houston (Texas): AMC Loews Fountains 18.
San Jose (California): Camera 12 Downtown.
Atlanta (Georgia): Regal Hollywood 24 @ 1-85.
Virginia, Washington DC: Regal Ballston Commons in Falls Church.

Shown tonight will be Little Fish (pictured right) where Dustin will be in various states of undress and kissing Cate Blanchett.

The special session on Dustin Nguyen starts at 6pm with a reception hosted by Wells Fargo (you know, that bank whose profit report buoyed the stock market last week), followed by the screening.

Also shown today will be two sets of shorts running parallel at 12 noon and a third set at 3pm. All events today will be at UC Irvine, HIB 100.

In the third set of shorts is a special sneak preview of director Leo Chiang’s documentary A Village Called Versailles, a powerful story of the Vietnamese community in Louisiana uniting and standing up against the government’s plan to place a landfill right next to their neighborhood, post-Katrina.

The showing of A Village Called Versailles will be followed by a panel discussion on the rebuilding of the community after Katrina.

Appearing on the panel, among others, will be Derrick H. Nguyen, better known by his Vietnamese name Nguyễn Hoàng Dũng. As a member of the White House Initiative on Asian-Pacific Americans during the Bush administration, Nguyen was intimately involved with efforts to help reconstruction of the areas devastated by the hurricane.

Starting at 4pm will be a set of short films including the hard hitting Life Out of a Stone (in Vietnamese: Đội Đá Vá Đời) – a 19-minute documentary by Hồ Thanh Tuấn, on laborers who cut and carry stones using crude hand tools. Also included is the animated Cuội and the Banyan Tree (right) by Tạ Thanh Hải, telling a Vietnamese fantasy about the man in the moon.

At 7:30pm is When Autumn Sunlight Comes (in Vietnamese: Khi Nắng Thu Về), a feature from by Vietnam’s Bùi Trung Hải. The film won a Gold Remi at the WorldFest-Houston film festival in 2008.

The director is already in town and will be at the screening for Q&A.

Click here for a full schedule, with film synopsis.

Highlights for the next few days of ViFF:

* FRIDAY is Senior Citizens Day: Free for anyone 65+ but (obviously) open to all. Friday films are shown at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. The first set of shorts at 11am includes an in-depth look at the Cao Dai religion, by USC professor Susan Hoskins. The second set at 4pm focuses on the immigrant experience and includes a 7-minute documentary by Le Hai, on the fate of illegal Viet immigrants living in the UK who call themselves Người Rơm – meaning a scarecrow, something that can disappear in a flash at the flick of a lighter.

At 7:30pm on Friday is The Hot Kiss (in Vietnamese: Nụ Hôn Thần Chết), a slap-stick comedy and the highest-grossing Vietnamese movie to date.

* SATURDAY, ViFF returns to UC Irvine with two sets of shorts running parallel at 12 noon. At 3pm is a third set of shorts running parallel with a sneak preview (in full though) of director Leo Chiang‘s documentary A Village Called Versailles, a powerful story of the Vietnamese community in Louisiana uniting and standing up against the government’s plan to place a landfill right next to their neighborhood, post-Katrina.

The showing of A Village Called Versailles will be followed by a panel discussion on the rebuilding of the community after Katrina.

At 6pm will be a special spotlight on the action star Dustin Nguyen.

Starting with a wine reception hosted by Wells Fargo, the spotlight session will follow with a screening of the Australian film Little Fish (pictured right) where you will get to see Dustin topless and kissing Cate Blanchett.

* SUNDAY is the final day of ViFF. At 12 noon is The Moon at the Bottom of the Well (Vietnamese: Trăng Nơi Đáy Giếng) by Nguyen Vinh Sơn, a touching film raising the issue of women’s dignity in a male-dominated society. Running parallel with it is a set of shorts on the art scene in Vietnam, including Stephane Gauger‘s Vietnam Overtures – a 60-minute documentary on classical music in Saigon and Hanoi.

The closing film is All About Dad (pictured below) by newcomer Mark Tran. The film starts with the title character, seeing a tree bending to one side, struggle to make it grow straight the way he wants it. Is that a metaphor for the way many Viet parents raise their kids? What else!

Dustin Nguyen, of 21 Jump Street fame (pictured right, from the movie The Rebel), captured the best actor award for his role in The Legend is Alive (Vietnamese title: Huyền thoại bất tử), helmed by Vietnamese-American director Luu Huynh.

Luu also won the best director award for the film.

Kathy Uyen, an OC resident, walked off with the best supporting actress award for her role in Passport to Love (Vietnamese: Chuyện tình xa xứ), directed by L.A.-born and OC-based Victor Vu (see this entry).

There was no award for best film, instead the organizers gave two co-runner-up awards (the “Silver Kites”) to two films, and The Legend is Alive won one of them.

If the organizers could not decide on a best film, others were not so undecisive. The media panel awarded a Golden Kite for best film to Owl and the Sparrow, a feature film shot entirely on a handheld steadycam, by first-time Vietnamese-American director Stéphane Gauger. Owl also won in the strangely named category “best film in coproduction with a foreign country” – a madeup category first used in 2004 to give an award to The Buffalo Boy (Vietnamese: Mùa Len Trâu), directed by UCLA grad Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo.

The audience voted for another Golden Kite best film award for Passport to Love.

The Golden Kites are awarded annually by the Vietnamese Motion Pictures Association. First given out in 2003, this award is new to the scene and has gone through a number of ad hoc changes over its short existence.

Vietnam has another set of national film awards known as the Golden Lotus awards, given out by the Ministry of Culture and Information at the national film festival, which is organized at haphazard times – not at set intervals. The last few festivals, for example, took place in 1999, 2001, 2005 and 2007.

The winner of this year’s Golden Kite for best director, Luu Huynh, used to live in OC but now makes his home in Saigon. In 2003, his short film Passage of Life (Vietnamese: Đường trần) won the audience choice award at the inaugural Vietnamese International Film Festival (ViFF) in Irvine. His feature film The White Silk Dress (Vietnamese: Áo lụa Hà Đông) was one of Vietnam’s most critically successful films, winning audience choice awards at the Pusan International Film Festival and also at ViFF. It also won best foreign film award at China’s Golden Rooster Awards, beating out eventual Oscar winner Pan’s Labyrinth.

Before that, Luu was famous for something else. In 1997, Luu was hired to work on a music video for the variety show Paris by Night, by Thuy Nga, for a Mother’s Day special issue (pictured right). On a song about the sufferings of Vietnamese women during the war, Luu played news footages of helicopters and a rice field that turned red. Thuy Nga was promptly accused of being commie; the ever-present Viet Dzung organized a burning of the video – but eventually Thuy Nga rode off all that to remain the top Vietnamese variety show.

The Bolsavik took the picture above at a party in 2007. From left: Kieu Chinh, one of Vietnam’s best known movie stars, most famous outside the Viet community for her role as Suyan in The Joy Luck Club; Tran Anh Hung, Vietnamese-French director of Cyclo, Vertical Ray of the Sun, and the Oscar-nominated Scent of Green Papaya; and the above-mentioned Dustin Nguyen; Stéphane Gauger; and Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo.