A fascinating film about China in 1938, just before the arrival of the invading Japanese. The film shows the real culture of China in a bourgeois family, how they are divided between respecting the traditions that set women apart, that provide married men with concubines, that marries sons and daughters at birth, but the film also shows how the refusal of these alienating traditions leads the sons and daughters of these families into the arms of the Communists, especially with the Japanese arriving. The film also shows how the Americans are trying to meddle with China via the good old Catholic religion that has nothing to do in China but that provides the poorest, in that case orphans, with a little hope and survival. But then the film turns sentimentalese. To make the elder son fall in love with the young concubine of his own father is far-fetched, and to add the mother falling in love with the American priest is even more far-fetched. And that makes the film mushy about good and evil and it forgets a country can only change from inside. It tries to impose onto China a change that comes from outside, from a foreigner who breaks the traditions instead of at the most helping them change all by themselves. It also shows that China in 1938 needed a big break, a big change and that this was going to come from the Communists prompted into taking the control of China by the absurd invasion from Japan. Some beautiful scenes, particularly the fast visions of the play telling the doomed love affair of two young people. Beautiful theater, beautiful drama.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines