# Hong fen (1994)

### reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz

BLUSH (HONG FEN)(director: Li Shaohong; cast: Wang Ji (Qiuyi), Wang Zhiwen (Lao Pu), He Saifel Xiao), Cao Lei (narrator), Wang Rouli (Mrs. Pu), 1994-China)

There is no doubt about the oppressiveness of the Chinese Communist regime, and this film, more than any other that I have seen, recently, presents the devastating emotional conflicts the Communist revolution has done to its people, even though, it is not overtly critical of them. It is beautifully filmed in the style of a formal Chinese landscape painting, using the commonplace to be viewed as something that goes beyond its present linear form, to give it an eternal flavor from what it might first appear like. The story is from a work by Su Tong, whose other novel was the basis for RAISE THE RED LANTERN. The story is related to us by a woman narrator (Cao), who we never see on screen.

In 1949 The People's Liberation Army closes down all the country's brothels, and in the outskirts of Shanghai, they close down the Red Happiness Inn, where all the girls are taking aboard a barge and turned over for re-education to an internment camp. Qiuyi (Ji) and Xiao (He) are very close, like sisters, with Xiao being weak-natured (she was born to be a whore, born in the Red Happiness Inn) and is very dependent on the independent minded Qiuyi.

Qiuyi escapes the camp and seeks out a rich playboy client, Lao Pu (Wang Zhiwen), who lives with his mother. He puts her up in their luxurious house, and takes pleasure in their relationship, until his mother openly disapproves of the girl and asks her to leave. He looks for a compromise to the situation, and tells Qiuyi he will get her an apartment where they can share a love nest. She is insulted by this, and storms out of the house, choosing to follow wherever fate takes her. It takes her to a Buddhist monastery, where she is forced to shave her head and live a pure life without any worldly desires, if she wishes to stay there. With much reluctance, she does this, and lives unhappily there until the nuns discover that she is pregnant and ask her to leave. Meanwhile, Lao is rebuffed when he visits her in the monastery, she is ashamed for him to see her without her hair. He leaves, and we witness how the People's Liberation Army confiscates his land and wealth, and forces him to become an accountant in a factory, paying him an unlivable wage. He starts a relationship with Xiao, after visiting her in the factory she now works at after being rehabilitated. After a night of sleeping together, she conjoles him into marrying her, telling him he will never see Qiuyi again.

At their marriage, Qiuyi comes by to give her a bracelet as a present. Xiao follows her outside, begging her to listen to why she got married, telling her that Lao talked her into it. Qiuyi says there is nothing to say, that she is not stupid, she knows when someone is lying to her, and then she gives Xiao, impulsively, another present, her umbrella, telling her she doesn't need it now that it stopped raining. The narrator tells us that in Chinese, umbrella sounds very similar to separation.

The marriage results in a son; they name him the "sad one", as their marriage is an unhappy one, full of fights and rancor, she is disillusioned that her husband can't give her a good life, and he, despondent about what has become of his life, realizing now, that he is married to the wrong girl. The third party in this unhappy triangle returns home to her impoverished childhood, after the monastery kicked her out and she miscarriaged at the shut door of the monastery, in the driving rain, and would have died except for the belated pity of one of the nuns who saved her life. As things seem hopeless, and she seems to have lost all her confidence; just to survive, she marries an old man who has a tea shop. He is so insignificant to the story, that we never even see him.

After much misery, seeing no way out of his problems, Lao decides to embezzle money from his factory. He mails most of the money he stole to Qiuyi, and he gives enough for Xiao to have a week's worth of pleasure. He is caught and executed. The narrator relates to us the events of the firing squad, and we learn how insignicant his death was. All we see, is the camera following the bland landscape, and all we hear of his death, are the shots being fired and the narrator telling us how he was expressionless at the time of his death.

Qiuyi learns she can't have children anymore, so she pays a visit to Xiao, who finds the child to be a burden on her. Qiuyi offers to take the child from her and raise him as her own. This is consummated when Xiao meets someone from the north, and decides to run away with him. Qiuyi renames the baby "New China". That is about as optimistic as it gets for this bitter tale of politics and romance, told from a woman's point of view.

This is a very serious, stylized film, artistically filmed with many long angle camera shots, that give the film a depth that goes beyond the mere telling of the story, though it seemed to be dragging it heels at times, as the story just hit dry spots in it. Its use of color cinematography was startling, as yellow was most effectively used to both evoke a sense of renunciation and hope. It was the color of Qiuyi's umbrella and supposedly her favorite color.

This is a most interesting but not particularly penetrating film to come out of modern China, one that is most blunt and cruel in picking up the human travails and emotional discontentments that the people faced in the hands of their liberators, but not able to say too much about why these hardships are taking place. It always seems that the one's who want to help you the most, end up doing you the most harm, and that seems no different with the self-righteous Communists trying to change the lives of prostitutes, than it does with any other group blindly follow their ideologies and forcing their will unto others.

    REVIEWED ON 12/26/98           GRADE: B-

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

    http://www.sover.net/~ozus

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ

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