Chinese Chocolate
Director: Cui Yan; Chang Qi
Year: 1995
Rating: 6.5
Much to my embarrassment
this film somehow managed to fly under my Diana Pang Dan radar for a long
time. Part of the reason is that she is credited as Diana Peng and the film
appears to be a Mainland China/Canadian collaboration. When I came across
it on an Internet on-line DVD store I assumed that it was a recent film with
Pang Dan as she has somewhat dropped into the bowels of low budget film hell,
but much to my surprise the film was made back in 1995. I am not sure if
this was in fact her first film or not, but her earliest Hong Kong credits
are for the same year. Since she studied in New York for ballet and then
won the Miss China USA contest, it’s entirely possible that she went from
there to make this film in Canada.
Even more interesting to a Pang Dan devotee, is that this film received a
fair amount of critical acclaim when it was released and played at some prestigious
film festivals (Berlin, Palm Springs, Tokyo, Toronto). Writing about the
Toronto Film Festival one critic calls it a “standout” and Variety (09/95)
refers to it as “insightful and acidic” – I am not used to a Pang Dan film
getting this sort of acclaim! But it is nice to see. The film itself is an
odd hybrid – it is a fairly serious drama that explores social issues and
has that mainstream/festival feel to it – but at the same time it certainly
takes the opportunity to make the most of Pang Dan’s physical assets and
often the camera hovers over her mystical breasts like a drunken frat boy.
This is especially odd when one considers that the film seems to aim its
barbs against the exploitation of women – and yet almost drools over her
curves. I would have attributed this to a healthy obsession from a male director,
but for the fact that the director is a female, Yan Cui , who also stars
in it and appears topless on a few occasions. Pang Dan as was to become her
trademark in Hong Kong films plays it sexy but never goes beyond showing
untilled acres of cleavage and some titillating poke your eye out nipples
in a shirt shots. She does a nice job here – I can’t say her acting skills
are particularly stretched but in her role as a newly arrived non-English
speaking immigrant her character takes on an increasingly vulnerable poignancy
as the film proceeds. Yan Cui’s character is much more fleshed out – somewhat
gray and she plays it very well.
There have been other films that detail the plight of Chinese immigrants
coming to the West for a better life – Farewell China, Crossings, Full Moon
in New York – that generally have tragic overtones as they find themselves
exploited and lonely. This film continues this trend as two women arrive
in Canada from China on the same plane. Yan Cui has come to meet her husband
who came three years before her and Pang Dan has come to study with $200
in her underwear in the hopes of making a better life for her family. The
husband it turns out has fallen in love with another woman and dies in an
accident on the way to the airport and Yan Cui finds herself all alone and
unable to tell her family back in China that this has happened. Pang Dan
realizes that she is in a helpless situation with little money and becomes
dependent on various men to survive.
As these women are forced to turn to men who are to say the least somewhat
odious to continue their life in Canada the film becomes a series of broken
affairs and broken promises. At the same time I felt some of the blame had
to be laid on the women who though not happy about it still use their sexual
charms to get what they need. Though Pang Dan is initially portrayed as an
innocent abroad she all too readily turns to sex to ease her economic and
green card plight. Not that I minded at all of course from a viewer perspective
but it made me less sympathetic towards her character than perhaps the director
wanted. It’s still a fairly solid if predictable film except for its enigmatic
ending and brings you into a world that surrounds many of us and yet is invisible
to us at the same time.
