Red Dust
Reviewed by YTSL
"May you live in interesting times."
So reputedly goes an infamous ancient Chinese curse. "I wish
we were born ten years later. Ours is an unfortunate generation."
Thus opines a character in the 1990 period piece which its director and
co-scriptwriter, Yim Ho, described as "a very, very emotional film", made
not too long after "the June 4th 1989 crackdown, and so it turned out to
be maybe too emotional" (In Miles Wood's "Cine East", 151:155).
For those who are culturally removed as well
as politically unaffected by the events of Tienanmen Square and others
which took place a half century or so ago in Mainland China and form the
movie's backdrop, RED DUST can come across as an overwrought and somewhat
unbelievable melodrama. The historic film's garnering eight nominations
at the Hong Kong Film Awards and eight awards at the Taipei Golden Horse
Film Festival (Best Picture, Director, Actress for Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia,
Supporting Actress for Maggie Cheung, Cinematography for Poon Hang-Sang,
Artistic Design for William Chang, Best Costume & Make-up Design, and
Original Score) bears testimony though to its having successfully struck
a chord with some East Asian folk.
At the center of RED DUST is a character who is
recognizably based on a Shanghainese author named Eileen Chang (one of
whose works Ann Hui adapted into "Eighteen Springs"). Giving an extremely
fine performance, Brigitte Lin brings to life this rather tragic as well
as eccentric figure: The child of a loveless marriage, whose father
not only remarried but kept her effectively imprisoned up in the attic
while he was alive; a novelist whose works of ostensible fiction contain
details about her own life and person (something which is recognized by
a male suitor who turns out to be married -- though estranged from his
wife -- and, worse, a Japanese collaborator); whose best friend is not
around as much as she would like, in some part because she has a boyfriend
who is a resistance fighter during World War II and anti-government demonstrator
afterwards. Apart from her romantic entanglements, the trouble they
bring and the pain they cause her, the protagonist also has to contend
with at least twice suffering fates that could be said to be worse than
death (in that she was unsuccessful in taking her own life), AND with living
through the tumultuous years that saw parts of China under foreign occupation
and civil unrest as well families along with territories get split up.
Sometimes, it is the case that fiction can be
too uncomfortably close to reality for some people. Considering when
and where the film was made, the fact of there being two student activists
(one of whom is portrayed by the luminescent Maggie Cheung; the other of
whom is played by Yim Ho himself) being sympathetically depicted in it
probably was as politically problematic as a Japanese collaborator being
made out to be less a villainous than pathetic individual. Indeed,
Yim Ho has reported that: "For allowing me to make RED DUST in China,
some of the top officials in the film bureau were forced to sit down and
write a lot of self criticism" (See Fredric Dannen and Barry Long's "Hong
Kong Babylon", 1997:164).
It also has been said that truth can be stranger
than fiction. At the very least, when one considers the lives of
certain key members of RED DUST's cast and their kin, quite a few events
and actions depicted in the film become rather ironic and still more melodramatic.
For example, when watching the chaotic scenes of people desperately trying
to leave for Taiwan ahead of the Communist takeover of China, it is hard
not to think of the fact that the work's lead actress and actor -- Brigitte
Lin and Chin Han -- not only hail from Taiwan but have parents who did
flee from the Chinese Mainland around this time and for this reason (Not
only that but Chin's father was a prominent Nationalist general and Lin's
father a military doctor). On a less political note, it also is difficult
to erase from one's mind that the two who played lovers in RED DUST were
a real life couple at the time that the movie was made (As such, there
seems to be a particularly knowing as well as intimate feel to the pair's
romantic scenes).
It might be due to my having a particular bias
in favor of RED DUST's main but also primary supporting actresses.
Maybe it is because the key relationship in a film whose focus is a woman
is that between two female friends. Whatever the reason, I do think
that the warmest as well as most charming scenes in this extremely personal
and poignant feeling -- sometimes excruciatingly so, in fact -- production
are those in which Brigitte Lin shares the screen with Maggie Cheung, and
we witness their characters caring for each other and revelling in each
other's company. Frankly, my major regret about this moving work
is: Less that it could not be the epic that some people have detected
that Yim Ho wanted it to be; but more that there were too few times that
this charismatic duo were alone as well as together.
My rating for the film: 9.5
