Darkness Bride

Last night I went to what will probably be my final movie of SIFF this year: Darkness Bride, a Mandarin-language Hong Kong movie that had promise as a chop-sockie zombie revenge flick. This, however, was not what was delivered, and I cannot recommend people go out of their way to see this movie at tonight's showing.

The movie is set in a clearly-modern China and has only a few aspects of a ghost story and no horror or action elements at all. Instead, it's about a group of three young people - a woman and two men - who are severely hemmed in by the poverty and long-rooted traditions of the rural community in which they live. The girl was sold as a child bride to a farming family to be the wife of their own, only child, a simple minded boy (who for some reason is named "Meimei" - little sister). His parents feel they control her fate, and when they turn against her, she is forced to run away to the city, where she and the two men have to learn a whole new type of existence. Sadly, their lives in the village follow them to the city, fracturing their community of three irrevocably.

What I found most interesting about this movie was the cinematography (hampered by the grainy texture I assumed came from shooting on video) and the social situations it described. The mud-brick houses, close living quarters, and extreme poverty of the rural scenes were truly a side of China I've never seen depicted on the big screen before. Normally filmmakers who tackle this environment make it romantic; William Kwok made it realistic, and claustrophic in an almost The Shining way. Sure, the horizons could have been big (if he'd ever shown them - since Sissy is a sheep herder you'd have thought there were lots of opportunities), but the number of people are small and the options are highly limited by the leaden traditions of rural society. There are also lots of spooky shots of bare-branched trees and mist passing over graves that create a good atmosphere, but which ultimately might work against the film rather than with it.

When the action moves to the city, Darkness Bride shows it as unromantically as the countryside: filthy, cramped, the work available hard, the living conditions relieved only by the availability of exciting dishes like "Kentucky Chicken" and "Cola." This was one of the strongest suits of the movie - its unromanticized view of modern Chinese life is unique among all the Chinese films I've seen.

The movie also is interesting sociologically. The director spends no time examining the uniqueness of the relationship between Ching Hwa ("Bright Flower," the woman), Sissy, and Chun Sheng, other than making it clear that the affection between the three of them is strong and deep. Ching Hwa understands that as Sissy's new bride it is her duty both to take care of him and to provide his parents with grandchildren. However, her life as part of a MMF triad is completely beyond what can be accepted in this environment, and her - and their - decision to leave their village seems forced not by the hand of the supernatural but of common sense. But once in the city, their very naivete works against them, making it difficult for Chun Sheng and Sissy to manage the attention that a pretty city girl lavishes them with. Is the fragmentation of their relationship caused by a vengeful ghost, or is it simply the inability of these three to adapt to new pressures?

After the movie was over, I was left asking myself, how had I so incredibly misread what this movie was going to be like? I think part of it was the blurb in the SIFF program: "decency and morality are subject to the laws of supply and demand ...Virgin corpses are bought and sold to become wives in the afterlife for unmarried males." I saw no indencency in this movie, and there were no corpses, fresh or stale, just a few grave digging sequences. I'm afraid as a big city girl, getting shocked at a romantic group consisting of more than two people is a bit beyond me now. When this story is retold with more zombie brides and some good wire work, I'll be happy to come back ... or when it is told with a coherent plot and some slightly better film quality, I'd be happy to watch it again. But if you value your cinematic dollar, don't spend it on Darkness Bride, lest the wasted money come back from the afterlife to haunt you.