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The thematics of water in Franco-Vietnamese literature and film describes a deep and intimate link between the body and place in Viet Nam (without in any way referencing Western stereotypes of place and ground). As represented by Nguyên Du in a famous episode from the Truyên Kiêu, that key text of Vietnamese culture, the image of the feminine body in an aquatic ecstasy rejects any simply voyeuristic or vulgarly lascivious reception to trace the “traceless” path of the fluid route that leads back up to the inner heart (or “heartland”) of the dât nuòc. The topos is to be read in its cultural specificity, far beyond any idealization of “blood and soil,” as the lyrical expression of localized identity, an affirmation of collective being together and, hence, of a limpid but indefatigable resistance to any external impositions.