Those haunted places in the heart

The second Vietnamese International Film Festival -- which runs tonight through Sunday and next Thursday through April 17 at various locations -- will present 37 features and shorts. Among them is Victor Vu’s exquisite ghost story “Spirits,” a compelling psychological mood piece that unfolds in three parts.

In the first, a young writer, Loc (Tuan Cuong), seeks shelter in a run-down house in the country, where a beautiful, enigmatic young woman (Kathy Nguyen), who is gentleness and kindness personified, welcomes him. The hitch is that the place seems to be haunted, and the film’s second part finds Loc recovering from a breakdown after discovering the house’s secrets.

Psychiatry student Linh (Kathleen Luong) nurses him back to health, helping him to recover the memories of what happened in the house, which inspire a bestselling novel. Loc and Linh fall in love and fix up the old house -- not the best move, for Linh’s own troubled past comes back to haunt her. The final chapter is a stunner, attesting to the power of the past and the destructive consequences for the individual unwilling to honestly face up to his or her failings. This is a unique and powerful film, with performances that are as subtle as they are utterly commanding -- as a diviner attempting to exorcise the house of its demons, Catherine Thuy Ai is as impressive as those actors already mentioned. If the end credits did not state that “Spirits” was shot in Fountain Valley, it would be all but impossible to guess that it was not filmed in Vietnam.

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New French films

The ninth annual City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival, which runs Monday through April 17 at the Directors Guild, will present a dozen recent French films. It includes premieres of the latest work from Claude Lelouch, whose “Men and Women” opens the festival; Bertrand Tavernier, whose “Holy Lola” screens Wednesday; and Costa-Gavras, whose Donald Westlake adaptation “The Ax” closes the festival. All three directors will appear after the screenings of their films (as will many other directors after their respective films).

Philippe Lioret’s “The Light” is a richly atmospheric romantic drama directed with admirable restraint. In 1963, Antoine (Gregori Derangere), a young veteran of the Algerian War, arrives on the island of Ouessant off the coast of Brittany to become one of its lighthouse keepers. This does not sit well with the close-knit community, which feels the opening should have gone to a local youth. But the affable Antoine gradually wins over his gruff but intelligent and principled lighthouse partner, Yvon (Philippe Torreton) -- and inadvertently Yvon’s beautiful, repressed wife (Sandrine Bonnaire). The tempestuous weather effectively expresses the emotions lying beneath the surface of this most civilized of triangles.

“Holy Lola” is yet another major achievement from Tavernier, who has consistently maintained a high level of accomplishment for 30 years. Always a powerful storyteller, Tavernier has never been afraid to tackle issues within the context of a strong narrative. In “Holy Lola,” an attractive French couple (Jacques Gamblin, Isabelle Carre) travel to Cambodia to adopt a child, and Tavernier takes the viewer step by step through their protracted ordeal. Through that he creates a portrait of a beautiful but widely impoverished country with a brutal history that is as compassionate as that of the couple and the small community of other French couples also trying to adopt.

Tavernier never judges but never shies away from depicting the despicable in human nature and is quick to cherish the noble impulses that run through French and Cambodian individuals who help the couple along their way, obstructed as it is by red tape and corruption. “Holy Lola” is a confident, beautiful film that overflows with vitality and emotion.

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Rough and tumble

“Tumbleweeds,” the classic 1925 western that marked pioneer cowboy star William S. Hart’s farewell to the screen, will be shown Monday at the Silent Movie Theatre. Directed by Hart and King Baggot from a Hal Evarts story in the Saturday Evening Post, “Tumbleweeds” is a great-looking, heartfelt salute to the closing of the frontier, but it’s also a rambling affair with a vintage western’s typically heavy-handed humor coupled with a black-and-white morality: Good guy Hart eventually defeats the pretty heroine’s land-grabbing, bad-guy half-brother. What’s enduringly exciting is the climactic land-rush sequence, involving, according to Photoplay magazine, 1,000 men and horses, 300 wagons, much livestock and 19 cameras. Film historian Kevin Brownlow ranks it “among the finest sequences of pure action in film history.”

Note: “Through a Lens Darkly: The Classic Films of Ingmar Bergman,” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a rare opportunity to see a selection of the Swedish master’s work on the big screen. The series, which runs at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through April 23, opens Saturday with “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1955), which became the basis for Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” and “Secrets of Women” (1952). (323) 857-6010.

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Screenings

Vietnamese International Film Festival

* “Spirits”: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: UC Irvine, Humanities Instructional Building 100

Info: (714) 891-8172

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Silent Movie Mondays

* “Tumbleweeds”: 8 p.m. Monday

Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

Info: (323) 655-2520

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City of Lights, City of Angels Film Festival

* “The Light”: 7:15 p.m. Tuesday

* “Holy Lola”: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Directors Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Info: (310) 289-5336