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One night in a Chinese resort

As temperatures often rise between India and China, the dragon country we believe is another land (of the enemy perhaps). With alien sensibilities and whole set of problems of their own making, these have no bearing or reflection on us.

One night in a Chinese resort

Closer home: The film’s victim-blaming approach following a sexual assault finds resonance here



Nonika Singh

As temperatures often rise between India and China, the dragon country we believe is another land (of the enemy perhaps). With alien sensibilities and whole set of problems of their own making, these have no bearing or reflection on us. At the International Film Festival of India, Goa, however, as the Chinese film Angels Wear White arrives and plays to a packed hall, one can sense more similarities than differences. 

Two are most glaring. Rich and powerful collude and subvert the system to their advantage and the fairer sex is always at the receiving end. In a way, the title of the film says it all. White is a symbol of virginity and purity, and as in India, so in China, there is undue premium on virginal values for women. So as the tale of sexual assault of two schoolgirls by a middle-aged powerful man pans out, the family reacts strongly and typically. In a classic victim-blaming approach, in one particular scene, the mother rips her daughter’s clothes, chops off her hair to make her look unattractive. Telling in import… do we see an echo closer home?

Simultaneously we are taken into another dismal world of the two sisters who work in a seaside motel where the abominable incident occurs. Their story is as dramatic and plight as unenviable. While the bruises the female protagonists carry on their bodies are unmistakable, even the smallest things are a dead giveaway. The lipstick the sister leaves behind for her younger sister is a legacy, the weight of femininity that women carry down the generations. 

The objectification of women manifests most prominently in a huge statue of Marilyn Monroe, the classic Forever Marilyn. How young girls often get themselves photographed under its shadow is more than an allusion. Be it the blonde wig or the painted toenails of the statue… objects speak as clearly as the voices of its protagonists are restrained. Their trauma and helplessness speak on their faces; passively expressive. Interestingly, the film didn’t pass muster with the Chinese censors for obvious reasons. For the film otherwise filmed in white light doesn’t paint China in good light. However, this is clearly one film that the CBFC in India would have been so happy with. Not a single scene shows the actual assault, even the sequence where the girls are shown undergoing medical test, camera never goes beyond the permissible. Yet the outcome of the intrusive medical test is a chilling indictment of patriarchal cultures. 

Of course, the Harvey Weinstein saga has already proved such incidents are not specific to any country in particular. But Indians would be able to sense a greater resonance. Though the setting Hainan island, “China’s gold coast” is remarkably different from our own, there isn’t a thing you can’t relate to.  From bribing the victim to intimidating and browbeating them, the pattern is the same and one that Indian audiences are too familiar with. Only unlike our rape dramas, the film never shouts over the top. Nor does it offer an easy solution. The perpetuation of oppression is almost cyclical, recurring time and again. Till someone has the guts to break free… the final scene has the motel girl Mia running away on a scooter and the Marilyn statue being towed away in a truck. A wonderful parallel… where she is headed, will she fall into another trap, we don’t know.

However, what we do fathom is that the film, after winning several laurels at other film festivals, wins the Silver Peacock for best direction at IFFI, it is clearly foregrounding an issue that is right now troubling women across the world. But then, the film comes from a woman director-producer Vivian Qu who says, “We are all one woman. We are all the same.”

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