The revolution is the cruelest pimp.

Very interesting documentary about a prostitute who returns from Beijing to her home in Hebei. I thought it was pretty well done, but there were some ethical problems that the director [naively, not maliciously, I think] did not consider. Audience members were quick to swarm and question why he didn't do more to protect the identities of those involved, and as a result, this was the most tense screening and Q&A session I've ever attended at a Taiwan film festival! It was also the first time I've had to sign a consent form in order to see a movie.

I have more to say about this, but I'm still sorting through the situation in my head.

Original story by Gu Hua (古华). Screenplay by Xie Jin and A Cheng.

Never has the phrase "Don't be nervous (别紧张)" sounded so damn evil...

Xie Jin also manages to create some intensely erotic scenes almost without revealing any skin at all. He was a master, all right.

Mao, a cinephile and water delivery boy, loses control of his bike and crashes into a tower of bricks. Inexplicably, a young girl at the scene of the accident knocks him unconscious with one of the fallen bricks and destroys his bicycle. Both Mao and the girl are picked up by the police. His head is bandaged, and since she is obviously the perpetrator but refuses to talk, she is taken into custody. She hands him her apartment keys, pleading with him to feed her goldfish in her absence. Entering her home, Mao discovers that she is also a cinephile. Her apartment is lavishly decorated with old movie posters, and boxes of classic film reels are stacked against the wall of a sumptuous home theater. He rummages through her belongings and discovers her journal, in which she narrates her life story as if it were a screenplay...
 

What follows is an immensely touching, bittersweet story of love, loss, and lives that are enriched (for the most part) by film. Chronologically, the story begins during the Cultural Revolution. The young girl, Ling Ling, tells of her mother, a radio broadcaster who conceived her out of wedlock and gave birth to her during an outdoor screening of Victory Over Death, an Armenian film (and one of the rare foreign films to be screened during the Cultural Revolution). Unwilling to denounce and expose her lover, Ling Ling's mother bears her share of abuse while she single-handedly raises a proud and strong-willed daughter. When she's about 4(?) years old, Ling Ling meets Mao Xiaobing, a precious childhood friend who shares her love of film. Xiaobing, as it turns out, is none other than our water delivery boy (the one coincidence which absolutely demands your suspension of disbelief in an otherwise fair and compelling script).
 

Sadly, the two are not able to grow up together. Xiaobing is forced to move away, and Ling Ling's mother gets married to the town's film projectionist, Pan. Despite Pan's best intentions, Ling Ling is never able to accept her new father, and even less able to accept her little brother, Bing Bing.
 

The story gets complicated and emotionally painful after this... Yet, I am so impressed by how the screenwriters managed to layer emotions by mixing both childhood and adult perspectives into several key scenes involving Ling Ling and her kid brother. When we are first introduced to Bing Bing, we see mom, dad, and son hoisted up on father's shoulders. Trailing several yards behind them, almost hidden by the glowing wheat if it were not for the color of her hair, is Ling Ling. Looking over her shoulder, we see mom and dad cavorting about with the precious son, playing and laughing and singing. They compare him favorably to Pan Dongzi, a child [male] screen star, a comparison which leaves no room for young girls like Ling Ling, now a sullen pre-teen. It's an incredibly heart breaking scene (one of many to come) in which we come to sympathize with this little girl whose dreams have become totally neglected by the very ones who used to nurture them. No wonder she's so sulky and grumpy! Yet at the same time, the adults are beckoning, gesturing for her to join in. Actually, everyone does try to include Ling Ling. Even the much-resented little brother still has nothing but love and admiration for his big sister. At the same time, it's hard to really blame Ling Ling for the tragedies that ensue, for which she's directly or indirectly responsible. The lonely life that she is living at the time that Mao runs into her seems retribution enough...
 

Ultimately, this film succeeds resoundingy in humanizing Ling Ling through effective performances by the little actresses playing her childhood incarnations. Children consume much of the screen time, but they play their parts surprisingly well. Little Mao/Big Mao are very well cast as a pair, and pre-teen Ling Ling is especially poignant. Things get a little too sentimental when we return to the present day, but the happy ending comes as quite a relief to the emotional rollercoaster that preceded it.
 

All in all, a wonderful surprise from a strangely mispackaged film. The Asia Society's logo seemed a little too prominently featured on the cover and the DVD menus for me to fully trust the film's intentions, at first (not to mention the poor image quality and somewhat washed out colors). Also, the cover and teaser blurbs suggest that this is about fans of pre-1949 black and white or silent films. The only connection here is that Ling Ling's mother idolizes Zhou Xuan, especially in Street Angel (马路天使, 1937), though the qipao she wears actually has less to do with that film than a general sense of the urban glamor associated with stardom, the dream of all beautiful young girls who grew up under projector beams. The subject of film nostalgia here is mostly CCP films -- Railroad Guerilla (铁道游击队, 1956) The Red Detachment of Women (红色娘子军, 1960), Little Soldier Zhang Ga (小兵张嘎, 1963), Shining Red Star (闪闪的红星, 1974), The Back Alley (小街, 1981), among others. Yet, all these film citations seem rather apolitical. Instead of ideology or Official History, they're completely saturated with human memory, and treated with a kind of sincere, deep affection that only a true cinephile could express. This is what makes Xiao Jiang's debut feature so refreshing. She's obviously in this business for the love of film.
 

Lingyu (Bai Yang) and Libin (Tao Jin) are two young city kids who join a band of actors in the War of Resistance against the Japanese. As members of a new-style huaju troupe, they travel the countryside performing rousing, patriotic plays which break down the boundaries between life and art, stage and audience. Their travels take them to Chongqing, the interior capital of the Nationalist government. As the war continues, Lingyu and Libin nurture their patriotic spirit, as well as their love for each other, amongst a tight-knit community bound by shared dreams and idealism.

Communication between their families on the East coast and the interior front is rather limited. Lingyu manages to obtain her father's consent to marry Libin by postal mail, but for the most part, they are on their own. Thus, a visit from Lingyu's cousin, Jiarong, comes as a surprise. What's even more alarming is his trafficking of luxury goods from Japanese-occupied Shanghai, business which allows him to profit despite the dire national circumstances. Nevertheless, he is family, and Lingyu is too gracious to criticize him directly, especially since she had been living under her aunt's care. Keeping the memories of their fallen comrades and hopes for a proud future in sight, Lingyu and Libin soldier on with their cultural work.

When the Pacific War ends, Lingyu and Libin celebrate by getting married. The two eventually make their way back to their remaining family in Shanghai, after making a detour through Lingyu's hometown to pay their respects to the victims of wartime hardship, including Lingyu's father. When they return to Shanghai, they find that Jiarong's profiteering has continued even after the war. Jiarong is merciless, an even greater hanjian than those he accuses of wartime collaboration. Unable to stomach the "charity" of her cousin and his family, Lingyu and Libin move out of their opulent, Western-style home and move into a simple rooftop apartment. They live modestly, content with each other's company and occasional visits from good, old friends.

He works as a teacher, and she gets a job as a journalist. She gets pregnant. They might have had a good life, but for some reason, things can't end happily. It's not clear to me -- nor to the filmmakers, it seems -- what is the true root of the problem, but the film insists on a tragic ending. The War of Resistance has been won, but something is still wrong with Chinese society, perhaps most clearly spelled out in terms of class differences. Something has gone awry with the nation if heartless opportunists like Jiarong can enjoy so much while doing so little, while noble, sincere couples like Lingyu and Libin have to work themselves to death.

Lingyu does get to tell off Jiarong a couple times, but all this drama only contributes to her exhaustion. One night, she collapses in the street, to be rescued much later the next day by her friends who formed a search party (because she had to collapse in a dark alley in the middle of a fierce downpour, of course). She manages to deliver the child (surely months premature, since she wasn't even visibly pregnant?!), but her own fate is unknown as she is wheeled off to the emergency room at the end of the movie, sent off under the paternalistic gaze of their wartime comrades. The film ends with a giant question mark projected onto a blank screen -- a cop out, to be sure, but an interesting retreat to pure symbol which reminds me of other desperate moments in modern Chinese history, moments that seemed to defy visual representation altogether.

The best part about this film is Bai Yang, resplendent as ever. One of my favorite Chinese actresses, for sure. It would have been interesting to see her role as a female journalist fleshed out in more detail -- it's definitely a recurrent figure in Chinese cinemas, if not many (all?) global cinemas, and one I'd like to pursue a little more deeply. Also notable, I think, is the soundtrack and use of cacophony. Shi Dongshan seems to capture layers of noise quite well. Even though such moments -- celebration, mob outburst, trauma, balcony contemplation while the bourgies play mahjong inside -- are brief, they suggest the touch of a thoughtful and sensitive director (or sound engineer?) that I wish I knew more about.

Chinese indie electronic artist Peng Lei (of Beijing-based band New Pants [新裤子]) turns to film directing in this stylish DV Cam feature on love, sex, and longing amongst Chinese youth. What is striking about this film is Peng's use of amateur actors, purportedly selected over the course of the band's own tours around the country. While this production detail does give the stars and the dialogue a certain amount of freshness, I have to admit that the finished product left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Taki's numerous lesbian romances, for example, seem inauthentic and staged almost entirely for the benefit of male visual pleasure. The very thought of how this band collected their cast seemed a bit sleazy and exploitative. I mean, how did they actually go about this task? Approach good-looking women with the line, Hey, I'm working on this movie, and we need some actresses who are willing to get naked and kiss another girl. You wanna try out? Why don't you kiss that girl right there? If you can do it with enough passion, y'know, make it look COOL and HOT or something, maybe I'll put you in my movie. At least one scene seems to suggest that this is exactly how it went down. Give me a break! The only reason they could get away with this is because some guy in a popular band is asking...

On the other hand, I thought the heterosexual relationships between Chun and her various lovers were rather amusingly plotted. There is no full explanation as to why she's roaming the streets of Beijing like a prostitute, except that she is unable to come up with her next month's rent and is therefore desperately willing to shack up with any guy who would have her (but ideally, they have internet at home). Unfortunately, her selection consists of a slightly imbecilic man who still seems strangely pubescent, a pompous literature professor who fancies himself the next great modern Chinese poet, and a punk philosopher with his own warped ideas about romance. Each one is such a caricature, especially when offset against Chun's own deadpan expressions. I can only imagine that we are seeing her perception of each man. None are good enough for her, which is why nothing about love or sex seems beautiful until she meets Taki...

There's also a terrific scene with a stuffed animal. Perhaps the best use of a stuffed animal I've seen in some time. And that's all I'll say about that.

Of all the 'modern women' pre-'49 films, this is probably the one that gets talked about the least, and rightly so... it's terrible and highly problematic in eight thousand ways which I don't feel like getting into at this point. Ouyang Shafei is the shrillest, most disingenuous, least sympathetic modern woman yet. Somehow she manages to succeed as a society woman and women's rights spokesperson, despite failing to walk the talk.

She abandons both her husband and child in pursuit of her empty agenda, but eventually comes to realize how badly she needs a home with all the warmth and domestic comforts which only she can provide. Moral order thus restored, the modern woman is no longer a threat. Whoopee!

With a very good Q&A afterwards with Professor Linda Williams.

Mediocre made-for-TV documentary on martial arts. Way too much Samuel L. Jackson and some questionable history, but still a valuable collection of interviews. Highlights include brief clips from early silent nuxia features, John Woo talking about his love for The Wizard of Oz (!), Ang Lee bagging on the repressed Chinese (again), intense archival interviews with Bruce Lee (long segment on him), Cheng Pei-pei (elegant as ever), and my favorite interviewee, Lau Kar Leung:

Now, 36 Chambers of Shaolin, I wanted to show this thing called kung fu. What is kung fu? Kung fu does not rely on fighting. Many things have to do with awareness. Your eyes, your ears to listen, and all kinds of weapons. And everyone must train in all of these chambers. Chamber of blades, chamber of kicks, chamber of eyes, chamber of ears... They must train in each chamber. So I came up with the idea, the human body, each part that moves have feeling of motion. Feeling of motion. Feeling of motion! It has its own kind of charisma. So I decided to show it in the 36 Chambers. Human kung fu cannot be attained by sitting there and moving one part. The whole body must move.

The bodies of hale and hardy men paving the roads for a revolutionary future are on full display here, but what really captures my attention is the language of Li Lili's gestures.

Don't be fooled -- she knows the tactical value of her seemingly natural, winsome smile.

( screenshots now, jottings later )

I first saw this at the Golden Horse Film Fest amongst a crowd that chuckled both knowingly and nervously all throughout the film. I've been curious for a long time about what prompts that laughter, that inevitable feeling of staginess, corniness, datedness, etc. that affects one as they watch these relics of a bygone era. Why do we laugh, why can't we help but mock the cultural products of that era, when historians, authors of scar literature, etc., didn't make it seem possible to laugh and poke fun back then?

One of my favorite quotes in the film comes from an artist who grew up during the Cultural Revolution Era:

当时，很高兴 [去看那些样板戏]。都很喜欢，特别是红色娘子军。因为他们穿得很少。穿得比较少。有大腿。那些斯宾有退漏在外面。 我们小时候最早的，对异性的那一个欲望是从样板戏开始的。 救灾革命里面发现了有一些真正的有生命的东西。

I really liked the modern day street dance interludes. Maybe I'll come back to explain why and clean up this entry, later.

It's a pity that the "Model Opera" version (样板戏) of Red Detachment of Women has garnered so much more attention than its predecessor, Xie Jin's dramatic rendition filmed more than 10 years earlier. Xie's version was also the first winner of the CCP's Hundred Flowers Award for films. As much as I might want to roll my eyes at this propagandistic story of an abused female servant's liberation and revolutionary education as a member of a Communist guerilla troupe on Hainan Island, I have to admit that this film was technically superb on a number of levels. The story even has a stylistic flair and suppressed erotic subtext that reminds me of some of the more notorious female revenge flicks of the time. Yet, the film insists on its own agendas, both political and aesthetic, offering a portrait of revolutionary identity formation that links the local to more universalist, internationalist aims.

Qionghua, the aforementioned peasant girl, exudes a fierce energy that threatens to exceed the bounds of the screen (not to mention the limits of realism) from the very first encounter. Her diehard spirit is recognized by Hong Changqing, a CCP guerilla troupe leader masquerading as a moneyed overseas Chinese entrepeneur. He purchases her from her former household and sets her free in the jungle so she can make her way to the nearby liberation army camp. Qionghua and Changqing's paths cross again when she, along with a newfound friend Honglian, finally joins the ranks of the Red Detachment of Women, a special unit comprised entirely of downtrodden, 物產階級 women fueled by a collective score to settle with the feudal masters of their peasant past. Changqing assumes the role of her comrade-in-arms and mentor as he teaches Qionghua to subsume her individualistic desire for revenge under the larger effort of revolutionary struggle.

It's one of those inevitable contradictions of female liberation as depicted through the patriarchal lens of party policy, I suppose... Females, peasants, children, the illiterate, ethnic minorities -- all these subaltern "classes" make for easy ideological appropriation. And if the story includes a character that rolls all these categories into one -- well, that's narrative gold. These "women" sing with such shrill voices at times, they do seem incredibly young to me, even as the film emphasizes their transition into a more militant womanhood. The line between Han Chinese and a generic sort of tropical "Other" isn't so clear either, but the setting must have seemed rather exotic to contemporary audiences then as it does now, what with monkeys as household playthings, strange tropical fruit, and giant palms silhouetted against iridescent skies. The people who live here become defamiliarized by association. They're portrayed as being beyond the easy reach of central KMT control -- not that the KMT ever had much "central" control, let alone any presence on this island off the coast of Guangdong, which apparently had garnered a reputation as a Communist hideout as early as the 1920s. Nevertheless, such depictions serve the dual purpose of skewering KMT inefficiency while simultaneously permitting Hainan Island to stand in for the "lost" island of perhaps, just maybe, Taiwan.

Anyway, there's a lot going on in this film... For example, there's also a strange, recurring economic theme that ironically can't be stripped completely from a film that purports to espouse the ideal of a classless future (i.e. the coins that Hong Changqing gives to Qionghua as her "travel money" when he frees her after purchasing her -- the same coins that she later returns to him as her party application fee). There's this theme of transformations and camouflage -- I'm thinking of when the women soldiers "disguise" themselves as peasants so they can infiltrate the home of their former landlord, Nan Batian, or the way Changqing dons this veil of money which protects him from interrogation, which allows him free passage between civilian and "liberated" territories... Nobody is exactly as they seem, like Honglian who is initially thought to be a man or Nan Batian who is perhaps the least dynamic character but still quite slippery in his own ways. But of course, anyone who dons a Communist uniform is always 100%, undeniably good. Even Qionghua's biggest mistake -- her overzealous attempt to assassinate Nan Batian -- is committed while she's in undercover civilian dress. And finally, there's all the spectacular, blockbuster explosions, large crowd scenes, grand military manuevers executed on epic scale. This was a very carefully crafted movie, no doubt about it, deserving of its title as a Chinese "classic", but like the characters within, it's definitely not something that can be taken at face value.