• _Blind Massage_

    From 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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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