Moreover, although BAOBER is a fantasy and
GODDESS a policier, both films feature some strikingly similar attributes: 1) a
vision of China’s rapid economic development played out through the lives of the
emerging managerial middle classes represented by the Beijing-based male love interests,
Liu Zhi (Huang Jue) in BAOBER and Yang Rui (Liu Yunlong) in GODDESS; 2) a critical vision
of the moral decay that accompanies this rapid expansion of a materialistic consumer
society represented by the dysfunctional marriages of the male leads to self-indulgent
shrews; 3) a somewhat nostalgic view of the old "new women" of China (post-1911
and pre-1949)—idealistic, independent, sexually liberated, patriotic, feminist,
individualistic but selflessly devoted to the construction of the ‘New China’ as
opposed to the hopelessly oppressed women who suffered for centuries under the Chinese
feudal patriarchy; 4) the use of this woman as a figure of salvation for the modern Peking
Man—Baby as the enfant terrible and An Xin (Peaceful Heart) as the Kuan
Yin/Madonna of the New China; 5) the tragic ends of the female protagonists and the
survival of the male protagonists newly enlightened by their encounters with these
extraordinary women; 6) the use of the factory and the countryside remote from the capital
as emblems of the past and places for the redemption of the morally bankrupt bourgeois
hero; 7) indirect references to the PRC’s political past shadowing its present
condition—represented in each case by the heroine’s relationship to an older
father figure who has no power to help her in any substantive way (in BAOBER, a dying
intellectual walled up in his massive library, and, in GODDESS, An Xin’s boss in the
drug enforcement agency); 8) Baby and An Xin’s innocence is confirmed by their
relationships with two "good men," who also represent the past (in BAOBER, a
husky punk rocker who grew up in the same factory complex with Baby and, in GODDESS, An
Xin’s first husband, the steadfast Zhang Tiejun played by Chen Jiabin); 9) the love
triangle of Peking Man-materialistic wife-old "new woman" parallels another love
triangle involving Peking Man-the old "new woman"-and a man representing the
corruption/broken dreams of the past (in BAOBER, a paraplegic in a wheelchair, and, in
GODDESS, Mao Jie (Nicholas Tse), a drug runner associated with a corrupt family surnamed
"Mao."
Both films seem to ask the same question: Even though the
"New China" and the "Old China" may be "in love," can they
successfully cohabit? Does the baggage associated with China’s past prevent the
successful continuation of China’s present? Both films seem to say "no" to
the first question and "yes" to the second by ending their narratives with the
deaths of both their female protagonists, the material "fall" of their male
protagonists, the failure to produce the next generation (the failure to give birth to a
child in BAOBER and the death of a toddler in GODDESS). Although the Peking Men survive
and they seem to be "enlightened" in some way by their love affairs, their
future remains uncertain at the conclusion of each film. While GODDESS points to the
Buddhist acquiescence to karma and the fateful consequences of human frailty, the
ending of BAOBER with the bloody death of the child-woman in the arms of her bewildered
lover seems less beholden to Buddhist tradition and more to the confusion of China’s
entry into a vertiginous capitalist modernity symbolized by the half-decayed and
half-renovated factory in which the couple has nested.
In fact, both films seem mired in their heroines’
pasts, which bleed into the past of the Chinese nation. BAOBER cuts between scenes
featuring Baby’s childhood and the present, and GODDESS wraps itself around an
extended flashback that chronicles An Xin’s romance with Mao, courtship and marriage
to Zhang, and the aftermath of the birth of Mao’s son and destruction of both
families. In fact, BAOBER situates its narrative between fantasy and memory. The opening
sequence of the film, for example, features a shot in which Baby, as a young girl, finds
herself in a house scheduled for demolition. As the roof of the house separates from the
walls (like Dorothy’s house in THE WIZARD OF OZ wrenched loose from its foundations),
Baby screams and the camera rapidly circles around her, while the modern cityscape of
Beijing erupts behind her like mushrooms after a storm. This image of the painful nature
of the transition from the closed factory world where the proletarian rule to the
cosmopolitan, capitalist metropolis that now dominates China lays the foundation for the
narrative that follows.
However, Baby, the child-woman that emerges from the ruins
of the "old" socialism, whom even her parents regard as mentally retarded or
"backward," does not easily adjust to Deng’s vision of "socialism with
Chinese characteristics." In fact, she is a vision of Mao’s "revolutionary
romanticism" gone haywire. When she finds Liu Zhi’s damaged video diary
chronicling his broken dreams of "true love" outside his loveless marriage, Baby
leaps into action to redeem this specimen of bourgeois decadence. She decides to fix the
tape and, then, Liu’s life. She begins by busting into his house and effectively
breaking up his marriage, like a mini-skirted Red Guard out to "save" him from
the spiritual pollution of cohabiting with a capitalist. Ripping off her permed wig, Baby
even begins to look more like the fresh-faced girls in braids sent off to spread Maoist
thought during the Cultural Revolution. She gleefully destroys the elderly
intellectual’s library like the Red Guards who destroyed any vestiges of
anti-revolutionary publications, magically brings the "iron rice bowl" to her
lovers’ parents as dishes pop up to provide a feast on the dining room table, and
helps a paraplegic find his "manhood" on the basketball court just as the
Communist Party was supposed to revive a "crippled" China that had become the
"sick man" of Asia. International recognition at the Olympics or Asian Games
still functions as an indication that China has been "cured."
Just as Mao believed that every peasant could forge steel
to industrialize China during the Great Leap Forward without the use of quality materials
or advanced machinery, Baby magically transcends the need for modern technology by
imaginatively flying next to her lover’s airplane. When Baby wants a home to call her
own with Liu, she settles on an abandoned factory. However, when Liu tries to remodel the
old factory to resemble a New York loft apartment, Baby rebels and destroys her
lover’s hard work in order to keep the factory as it is. She is more at home in the
old "new" China than she is in the postmodern, postindustrial landscape that Liu
tries so desperately to construct. Harassed by a gigantic black cat in her fantasy world,
Baby, going against Deng’s prescription for economic reform, does seem to care more
about the "color of the cat" than whether or not it "can catch the
mice."
Baby, a whirlwind of "revolutionary romanticism,"
still cannot stop the winds of change, and Liu is simply left with her dead body rather
than hope of wedding the "old" new China to the "new" new China in
this millennial fantasy of failed romance. However, as a tour-de-force of special effects
and as a celebration of youthful vigor and romantic fantasies, BAOBER circulates as
spectacle and becomes a bankable part of the consumer culture it apparently critiques.
Having its cake (in the striking cinematography, visual design, and musical score) and
eating it too (in a cautionary tale of the spiritual and moral vacuity of the capitalist
road) keeps BAOBER from pointing to any compelling new direction for women, politics, or
cinema aesthetics within contemporary Chinese culture.
Although the cinematic virtuosity of BAOBER may appear to
owe more to Hong Kong directors like Wong Kar-wai or Johnnie To, the film actually fits
well within a certain type of Fifth Generation cinema that favors the urban satire (e.g.,
the films of Huang Jianxin). However, Ann Hui’s GODDESS is much more beholden to the
Fifth Generation in its choice of themes (e.g., the suppression/explosion of female
sexuality, the reexamination of the Chinese patriarchy, disillusionment with the Communist
Party, explorations of ethnic identity, etc.) and locations (e.g., the minority areas of
Yunnan and Tibet) than to the Hong Kong New Wave. For the Fifth Generation, the minority
regions of Yunnan, Tibet, and Mongolia offered a way to reconnect with their experiences
of being "sent down" during the Cultural Revolution as well as giving them a way
to explore the meaning of "Chinese-ness" outside of Han (and/or Communist Party)
rule. Although she does not share this history with the PRC’s Fifth Generation, Ann
Hui is no stranger to filming in some of the more remote areas of China, including Hainan
Island which stands in for Vietnam for BOAT PEOPLE, and she clearly has a feeling for
minority areas, the southern Chinese landscape, and the relations between the Han Chinese
and other Southeast Asian cultures. In GODDESS, she effectively puts into play a tension
between North and South that concludes with a narrative move to the West; i.e., Tibet.
Just as the Fifth Generation has obsessively returned to
stories about the Cultural Revolution, GODDESS, in many ways, functions implicitly as a
story of the tragic fate of "educated youth" "sent down" to the
countryside to be "reeducated" by the peasants and help build socialism. In her
devotion to duty, the film’s heroine An Xin seems like a throwback to an earlier time
when Mao’s "revolutionary romanticism" reined. In fire fights in the
jungles of China’s tropical south and dressed in paramilitary gear, An Xin looks like
a character right out of Xie Jin’s WOMEN’S RED ARMY DETACHMENT. Willing to brave
physical hardship and separation from her fiancée (and, later, husband and child) in
order to "serve" China by ridding the countryside of the capitalist drug lords,
An Xin acts like a Communist heroine from another era. Moreover, like the Red Guards who
went to the countryside to spread Maoism among the minority nationalities, but, instead,
ended up disillusioned, deracinated, often lovelorn, and part of China’s "lost
generation, An Xin becomes tainted by her contact, far from the moral center of Han
culture, with Yunnan and its dramatically different lifestyle. Perhaps tendentiously, the
source of her moral corruption and tragic downfall is named "Mao" and she
eventually goes to Beijing to straighten out her life.
In her zeal to become the model policewoman, An Xin may fit
in with images of the "model worker" of the Communist Party; however, she also
embodies a career drive unbecoming to "traditional" Chinese women. Removed from
her fiancé, the man in her life who should control her, An Xin ends up having an affair
with Mao, the son of a prosperous family in the area. However, unlike Yang’s mate,
her professional ambitions do not derive from any desire to be a part of the capitalist
economy. On the contrary, she battles capitalism, embodied by the corrupt Mao family, who
resemble the "evil" landlords and capitalist "roaders" of an earlier
generation.
Although the Nicholas Tse character plays "Mao,"
he also plays the "anti-Mao," the corrupt capitalist and tragic gangster. In
fact, the casting of Hong Kong star Nicholas Tse in the role also seems to set him apart
from the rest of the narrative. Although Mao is very much a mainland character, Tse’s
performance of the role links Mao, and the film, to Hong Kong and Hong Kong film culture.
He seems to have stepped out of a gangster film, operating under a generic code that
emphasizes personal honor, male camaraderie, and family/clan loyalty. In some ways, he may
cut too sympathetic a figure as he tragically kills his own son to avenge the destruction
of the rest of his family. Tse and Zhao, Mao and An Xin, the gangster and the CCP
functionary, Hong Kong and PRC film genres, and Hong Kong and the PRC still seem to be
worlds apart, operating under different rules, and definitely functioning as "two
systems."
Although Han Chinese, Mao is clearly comfortable with the
traditions and lifestyles of the minority nationality of the area, in this case, the Dai
(the same minority nationality featured in the late Zhang Nuanxin’s SACRIFICED YOUTH,
which also portrays the sexual awakening of a Han Chinese woman living among the Dai).
While An Xin tries her best to avoid being drenched during the Dai water-splashing
festival, meant to wash away bad luck, Mao takes his soaking in stride and offers An Xin a
towel. Although An Xin assumes Mao is a punk and the towel stolen, she soon learns he is
the "young master" of a thriving household with every right to offer her the
towel from the clothesline. Compared to her struggling and distant fiancé, Mao provides a
wealthy, sexy alternative—free with his cash and his body—at home outside Han
Chinese culture and its moral strictures. Already pregnant, An Xin discovers too late that
her first reading of Mao’s character was, indeed, correct, and that he is a punk who
runs drugs for his corrupt family.
In an undercover sting operation, An Xin makes contact with
Mao. As she does with her fiancé, An Xin puts duty far above romance and does nothing to
try to get Mao out of trouble. In fact, when Mao begs her not to tell the police about his
identity in order to save his family from the long arm of the law, she ignores
him—eventually leading to the demise of his entire family. However, An Xin’s
dedication to duty also leads to her downfall. Mao squirms out of jail on the grounds that
An Xin set him up in order to break off their love affair, and he goes on a vendetta
against her. Drawn back to Yunnan like a moth to the flame, An Xin just manages to escape
with her infant son. Her husband Zhang is not so lucky, and he ends up sacrificing himself
for his wife and Mao’s baby.
Mother and child end up in Beijing, where An Xin, a Tae
Kwon Do champion from her police days, works at a martial arts studio as a janitor. The
film begins when Yang is smitten by the working class beauty from the exotic south, takes
up Tae Kwon Do to woo her, and ends up in jail when his lover/boss blows the whistle on a
crooked deal she set up for Yang. Having used her police connections to spring Yang, she
leaves him with a "Dear John" letter outlining her sorry circumstances. Still
smitten and fearless, Yang pursues An Xin, finds her, but, eventually, loses her again.
Drawn to her old job and eager to see her old boss, An Xin foolishly returns to Yunnan and
falls into Mao’s clutches. An Xin’s showdown with Mao erupts in an internecine
family battle oddly reminiscent of the bloodbath in Zhang Yimou’s JU DOU. Yang ends
up in Tibet (worlds apart from the materialism of modern Beijing), licking his own wounds,
supposedly trying to reconnect spiritually with the living Kuan Yin (An Xin resembles the
jade goddess she wears as a talisman) he has lost.
It is striking that two prominent Chinese women directors,
from both sides of the PRC/Hong Kong border, should gravitate to such similar stories at
the same time. Both are cautionary tales; however, what exactly they caution against
remains somewhat opaque. Neither film paints a glowing portrait of contemporary Beijing,
where fast money, corruption and consumerism have robbed the capital of its moral, if not
political centrality in Chinese civilization. However, neither film allows its nostalgia
for a past represented by its old "new" women, dedicated to serving
"China," to overwhelm the narrative. A magical child of the socialist factory
system, Baby cannot survive in the new China. She may help others, but she cannot save
herself. Likewise, An Xin’s dedication to duty dooms her, and GODDESS may have
"mercy" on her, but it does not absolve her of her complicity with a system that
caused her own, her baby’s, her husband’s, her lover’s, and her
lover’s entire family’s destruction.
Although an unchecked libido gets both Baby and An Xin into
trouble, the films do not seem to caution against the expression of female sexuality. Sex
may be fatal to both, but that does not seem to be the point of either BAOBER or GODDESS.
In fact, female desire, although central to the narrative of each film, does not
materialize as a concrete presence in either. Liu Yunlong, Chen Jiabin, and especially
Nicholas Tse all have their attractions; however, there does not appear to be much
chemistry between any of them and the film’s heroine. One shot in GODDESS is
particularly telling. Nicholas Tse/Mao, after meeting An Xin for the first time, turns his
wet face in profile to the camera, water dripping down like tears, sensually accentuating
the texture of his skin. However, An Xin has already exited the scene, and this moment of
carnal contemplation is left only for the omniscient camera and the viewer to enjoy. Thus,
this sensual moment remains outside the workings of the plot and does nothing to convince
the viewer of the strength of Mao’s and An Xin’s fatal, physical attraction. In
BAOBER, Zhou Xun’s interpretation of the role too often emphasizes her innocence and
joie de vivre at the expense of sexual intensity (despite glimpses of nudity). Although
feminism in China and the West has placed female sexuality squarely on the agenda for
women artists, neither Li nor Hui seems that interested in pushing any limits or exploring
any real taboos.
In the final analysis, Baby is more a victim of her
inability to adjust to or at least negotiate a separate peace with the new China, while An
Xin falls victim to her own sense of duty to China and seems to punish herself for failing
to live up to the ideal. Female sexual desire, although taboo in both cases, may push the
heroines over the edge, but the real culprit in their tragic ends goes beyond their
libidos to China itself. Each film serves up the heroine as a scapegoat for the ills of
the State, and their deaths appear to exorcise the ghosts of the past and point to a
spiritual renewal for their lovers. That neither of these sexually free, implicitly
"feminist" characters can survive in the new China indicates that both Li and
Hui have their own doubts about the future of women in China. When women move beyond the
capitalist ambitions and consumer obsessions of the newly emerging Beijing bourgeoisie,
they may hold onto their souls, but they step outside the market-defined parameters of the
personal and professional roles considered appropriate for women in the new China.
Top
Other Chinese Women
Directors, Other Directions at the HKIFF
Although Li Shaohong and Ann Hui held the honor of opening the festival, several other
Chinese women directors also had films screened at the HKIFF, so that Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and the Chinese diaspora were all well represented by women filmmakers. Like Ann Hui,
Carol Lai (GLASS TEARS, 2001) crosses the border with China. However, Lai sets her film,
FLOATING LANDSCAPE (LIAN ZHI FENGJING), in picturesque (and chilly) Qingdao. Just as
BAOBER and GODDESS feature women encumbered by the past, FLOATING LANDSCAPE narrates the
story of Maan (Karena Lam) who travels from Hong Kong to Qingdao to find the landscape her
painter boyfriend Sam (Ekin Cheng) created before his death from a terminal disease.
Obsessed with the picture and with her dead lover, Maan spends her time in Qingdao
searching for the landscape and copying Sam’s diary daily. As Maan clings to the
past, Sam’s cousin tries to extricate herself from the past represented by her
violent ex-husband who refuses to accept the fact that his ex-wife needs to move on and
date other men. Lit (Liu Ye) appears in Maan’s life to offer the hope of a new
romance to offset the bitterness and violence associated with these other romances.
As in many films by Hong Kong directors, the PRC represents
the past, childhood, memory, nostalgia, and a world that remains primitive,
"pre-modern," and that has not "caught" up to modern Hong Kong. The
dying Sam (who appears in flashbacks), immigrated to Hong Kong as a boy and remains
obsessed with the mainland landscapes of his youth, even though he cannot really know
whether he draws from memory or imagination. Characters in Hong Kong often go to the PRC
to search for the past, for the roots of their current condition, and to try to find
answers in history for the ills of the present or renew themselves through contact with
the childlike "innocence" of the Chinese countryside and its people. Lit, a
postman who delivers letters by bicycle, has time to chat with all the people on his
route, and who loves to play with the neighborhood kids, seems made to order for the urban
Hong Kong woman in need of spiritual renewal. Patient and persistent, Lit continues to
court Maan even though she tries to remain faithful to her dead lover. In another parallel
to the principal plot, an elderly woman loses her terminally ill husband. Instead of
seeking solace in copying a diary, she copies Buddhist scriptures, and she provides the
key necessary for Maan to move on as well by recognizing the landscape in Sam’s
picture. Just as many of the exuberantly filmed fantasy sequences transcend the morbid
nature of much of the plot in BAOBER, an engaging animation sequence that brings
Sam’s drawings magically to life adds color to FLOATING LANDSCAPE’s somber
contemplation of death, mourning, and the vicissitudes of fate and romance.
Coming at co-production with Hong Kong from the direction
of the "other" China (ROC/Taiwan), Sylvia Chang (TONIGHT NOBODY GOES HOME, 1996)
approaches romance as comic (or, at least, bitter-sweet) rather than tragic in 20:30:40.
As the title implies, the film looks at the lives and loves of women aged 20, 30, and 40
in contemporary Taipei. Sylvia Chang plays Lily, a 40-year-old florist who finds out her
husband has a second wife and son when she delivers flowers to the "other"
woman’s apartment and sees a giant photograph of the happy family with her
husband’s face beaming down at her. After the divorce, Lily must come to terms with
her ex-husband, a college-age daughter who has grown apart from her mother, and a series
of highly unlikely new romantic matches. At 30, Xiang Xiang (Rene Liu), a stewardess, also
has problems with men—both married and unmarried. However, the women at 20 still seem
able to explore a world apart from men on the borders of friendship and lesbian desire as
they hope to find stardom as pop singers in Taipei’s music industry.
The comic performance of Anthony Wong, as a
Cantonese-speaking, burned-out hippie, folk singer/failed record producer, is one of the
highlights of the film. Involved for years in an extramarital affair with one of the
twenty year olds’ mother, Wong pulls out all the stops in his portrait of the
endearing loser that even his lover’s daughter, who comes to Taipei to be his
protégé, forgives for ruining her singing career and sullying her idealistic vision of
monogamy and marital bliss.
Chinese Canadian Ann Marie Fleming also adds quite a bit of
whimsy to her documentary, THE MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM, a portrait of her
great-grandfather who was a fixture on the international vaudeville circuit before World
War II. Undaunted by the lack of film footage of the vaudevillian, Fleming draws on her
considerable imaginative talents for animation to bring this Chinese magician’s life
to the screen. Relying on the skills of a team of animators, she lavishly illustrates Long
Tack Sam’s life and the various versions of his story that have circulated over the
years in comic book form. Putting herself and her own journey to find out about her
grandmother’s father at the fore, THE MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM becomes as much a
story about the difficult odyssey of documenting a figure from the past as it is the tale
of a nearly forgotten Chinese entertainer who broke new ground in the world of magic and
acrobatics. Fleming travels the world to piece together the elusive tale of Long Tack
Sam’s life on the road, his marriage to a Viennese woman, his incorporation of his
daughters in his vaudeville act, and the way in which two World Wars and the vicissitudes
of history shaped the life of this Chinese entertainer. Rather than searching for her
"roots" in Chinatown or China, Fleming situates herself and her history firmly
with the Chinese diaspora, refusing to ground herself or her great-grandfather’s
story in any one place on the globe. Ultimately, the film becomes an imaginative cinematic
conversation between the Chinese Canadian woman filmmaker and the pioneering Chinese-born
entertainer that highlights the remarkable similarities that exist between the two across
gender and generation. Just as Long Tack Sam passed through Hong Kong on his travels,
Fleming’s film circulates within Hong Kong film culture as testimony to the diversity
that exists among the ranks of Chinese women filmmakers working globally.
In fact, the range of films screened by Chinese women
directors at the HKIFF demonstrates the dynamic quality of transnational Chinese film
culture. All these films cross national borders, drawing on talent from the PRC, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora to present a portrait of contemporary Chinese
women’s lives. As more markets in the mainland open to Hong Kong filmmakers, the use
of PRC actors and locations in Hong Kong film will certainly continue (e.g., GODDESS,
FLOATING LANDSCAPE). As PRC filmmakers also see the international festival circuit as well
as markets in Hong Kong as viable venues for their work, the need to draw on the global
savvy of Hong Kong filmmaking talent will likely persist (e.g., the collaboration between
TimYip and Li Shaohong). Also, Taiwan, which still treats Hong Kong films as "local
products" eligible for the prestigious Golden Horse Awards, remains an important
factor in transnational Chinese production. The use of Hong Kong actors (e.g., Tony Leung
and Anthony Wong in 20:30:40) helps to solidify those ties, making stories set in Taipei
palatable to the Hong Kong viewing public.
Chinese women continue to be important players within
Chinese film culture behind as well as in front of the camera. Hong Kong, too, continues
to exert its considerable force as the liveliest film industry in Greater China with the
Hong Kong International Film Festival as the natural showcase for the best of the best
within global Chinese film culture. At the festival’s closing ceremony, a
representative of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council officially passed the running of
the festival to the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society, which now puts the
HKIFF in the hands of the private sector. Most see the change as positive, since it allows
the festival greater flexibility in fund raising and other activities. As in Hong Kong
film culture generally, new directions usually point to new wellsprings of creativity and
renewed vigor. Hong Kong film devotees around the world wish the Hong Kong International
Film Festival Society every success for the future.
Gina Marchetti, May 04, 2004
