_Blind Massage_
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septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to
All on Sat Feb 10 20:53:29 2018
Art house cinema in mainland China came of age with Lou Ye.
His films may be funded overseas and are partly aimed at film
festival audiences (although the _Blind Massage_ apparently
played in many Chinese theaters), but they don't feel like
they played to Western expectations. Even _Summar Palace_,
centered around the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, uses scenes
of government suppression not as political props, but as the
very real reason that a generation of Chinese feel uprooted,
their lives literally torn in half. Lou's characters are never
stereotypes; his focus on these very human characters are
their loves, heartbreaks, and attempts to forge meaningful
futures. His youthful protagonists are no different from
those found in French or South American cinema. By focusing
on the often ordinary interior lives of his extraordinary
characters, not the circumstances of their "oppression,"
Lou Ye becomes the one contemporary Chinese filmmaker who has
crystalized the soul of modern China.
_Blind Massage_ continues Lou's exploration of individualists
embedded in unusual groups. The protagonist lost his sight
in childhood due to unspecified illness, and finds a sense
of belonging in a blind massage parlor. Apparently these are
very popular in China, and are tourist traps as well. Most
fellow masseurs and masseuses are played by real-life blind
amateurs, although some veterans of Lou's previous films and
professional actors who play the sighted supporting staff
complete the cast. The cinematography, which evokes the limited
eye-sight of the ensemble cast, is much praise, even if it
does not work too well on DVD. The story is adapted from a
novel. For once, Lou himself did not work on the screenplay;
although it has the amorphous, semi-documentary feel of many
of Lou's films, it lacks the moments of casual, revelatory
surprises (like one of the character jumping to her death
in _Summer Palace_ without warning). Instead, the film
has enigmatic voiceover narration by an unknown female,
ruminating about the meaning of blindness and sight. Since
Chinese cities are not known for being ethnically diverse
(one only has to look at Tibet to guess what happened to
racial minorities), the blind constitute a key minority in
the population; the power dynamics between the two groups
are fascinating. There are perhaps a few too many visits to
the Emergency Wards to generate drama -- health/defects as
essence of human experience are constant subtexts -- but
the subplot about a sighted prostitute (prolific Chinese
actress Lu Huang) who chooses a simple life with the
male protagonist is beautifully realized. It is perhaps the
heart of the film.
_Blind Massage_ won many trophies, especially at the prestigious
Taiwanese Golden Horse award show; I wish Lou Ye's film has a
wider audience.
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