"Ruan Lingyu" movie poster (picture from the Internet)
"Ruan Lingyu" is a biopic produced by Golden Harvest Operation Co., Ltd., directed by Kwan Jinpeng, starring Maggie Cheung, Leung Ka-fai, Qin Han, Wu Qihua, released in Hong Kong on February 20, 1992. After "Ruan Lingyu" was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, Maggie Cheung, who played Ruan Lingyu, also won the Best Actress, making the audience abandon the impression of "vase" and "auxiliary role" and enter the golden age of their own films. After 30 years, this movie was restored and re-screened, and the glorious and short life of Ruan Lingyu's generation of famous singers was once again remembered by more audiences.
"We are all women, we all have similar experiences, but when faced with difficulties, do we all have to choose the same ending?" is the question Maggie Cheung is asked in the movie. This is a biographical film that records Ruan Lingyu's tragic and legendary life, and it is also a dialogue about love and new women across time and space. Director Kwan Jinpeng uses a feminist perspective and a special layered shooting technique to connect Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung, two similar but different women, to convey the awakening of modern women's consciousness in the form of meta-films, the confrontation with male power and patriarchal society, and women's self-help.
A film critic commented: "Hong Kong films have always been full of machismo, and there are very few women's films, and among them, Kwan Kam-pang is recognized as the most religious, hardest-working, and most remarkable" (Li Yizhuang, 1998). As a male director, Kwan has made many films about women or with women as the main characters. He believes that "the explosive power and hardness of life hidden in women's bodies are stronger than those of men." In his films, women are no longer canaries in cages, objects of the weak to be protected, objects of desire from the perspective of the male gaze, but subjects of conscious desires with both soft and masculine beauty. Women either complete self-liberation in the pursuit of self-ideals, or seek self-salvation and self-awakening in the oppressed patriarchal society. For example, Ruhua in "Rouge Buckle", in Hong Kong in the thirties of the twentieth century, Ruhua could only be reduced to a man's plaything as a woman in a green house. But in order to pursue her love, Ruhua can wait for decades, dare to fight against the stubborn feudal etiquette, and do not hesitate to pay for her life. Although she failed to do so in the end, Ruhua completed the awakening of self-consciousness and realized the value of life in the persistent pursuit of love and happiness.
The movies directed at the same time as Kwan Jinpeng prefer male themes such as lonely heroes and brotherhood. Guan Jinpeng, on the other hand, focuses on women as the core of his works, and insists on portraying female characters from the perspective of respect, equality, and admiration. In the films of the same period, women mostly appeared on the screen as "foils" or "playthings". For example, a gang leader, a woman with a graceful presence next to a gambling king, or someone waiting for a man to help. The portrayal of female characters is full of desires imposed from a male perspective, and what is lacking is the manifestation of female subjectivity's emotion, personality and self-awareness. In Kwan Jinpeng's films, it is precisely to rescue women from "being stared at" and to strip away the constraints attached to women from the traditional fixed perspective. This kind of shaping of women's image is not just on the surface, not just a simple "storytelling", but a narrative of women's growth and transformation that is integrated into the chronology and full of humanistic colors.
Male characters from a female perspective – three men in "Ruan Lingyu".
Most of the films directed by Kwan Jinpeng exist in a binary opposition between women and men, that is, an absolute critique of women's praise and men's praise (Ling Jing & Deng Fa, 2014). In "Ruan Lingyu", the movie portrays the images of the three partners Zhang Damin, Tang Jishan and Cai Sheng from the perspective of Ruan Lingyu.
Zhang Damin is Ruan Lingyu's first boyfriend. Ruan Lingyu gave her youth and ignorant love to Zhang Damin. Although Zhang Damin has received a certain amount of education, he is an out-and-out gentleman. After falling in love with Ruan Lingyu, he neither had a fixed job nor sought to be motivated. The income between the two depends on Ruan Lingyu's filming. After Ruan Lingyu met Tang Jishan and fell in love, Zhang Damin made paying all his living expenses as a condition for divorce, and created a series of public opinion incidents that slandered Ruan Lingyu, pushing Ruan Lingyu to the forefront of public discussion. In the movie, the two get along more than lovers, Ruan Lingyu is more like taking care of Zhang Damin as an elder, and Ruan Lingyu's heart is more mature than Zhang Damin. Although it may seem like a man is in charge of everything in this relationship, women have a much stronger inner power than male characters.
On the boat to Hong Kong, Ruan Lingyu met Tang Jishan. Unlike the naïve and squishy Zhang Damin, Tang Jishan is more mature and considerate. After many years of love in the field, Tang Jishan was able to see Ruan Lingyu's worries about material life and help Ruan Lingyu solve them. But in Tang Jishan's eyes, Ruan Lingyu has always been her plaything, a symbol of her identity and wealth. When faced with a crisis, Tang Jishan's previous gentleness and demeanor are completely gone, and her selfish face is undoubtedly revealed.
Cai Chusheng is the third man in Ruan Lingyu's life, and he is also the only life-saving straw that Ruan Lingyu can grasp in the dire situation. Ruan Lingyu starred in Cai Chusheng's film "New Woman", in which the protagonist Wei Ming has a similar experience to Ruan Lingyu, and is also a new-age intellectual woman who pursues freedom. During the shooting, Cai Chusheng's care for Ruan Lingyu and the common ideology and spirit made the two have feelings for each other. However, Cai Chusheng is cowardly, and he can't make his feelings for Ruan Lingyu public. He was a fearless artist, but at the same time a man who was trapped in the minds of the traditional class. When Ruan Lingyu asked Cai Chusheng for help, Cai Chusheng chose to retreat and withdraw himself from this ambiguous emotion.
Whether it is the sequitable Zhang Damin, or the romantic Tang Jishan, or the cowardly and inferior Cai Chusheng, the perspective of Ruan Lingyu is one-sided: it is a tool that is used to make money, a canary raised in a western-style building, and an actress who maintains an ambiguous relationship with herself. In the movie, from the perspective of Ruan Lingyu's own narrative, we see a progressive woman in the new era who dares to break through herself in the film career and fight for a role for herself, dares to love and hate in love, and bravely pursues, and has a sense of responsibility in life. Different from a single description, we see Ruan Lingyu's growth as a woman in the movie, which is a more realistic and prejudice women's story.
Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung: A Dialogue with Women in Different Eras
In the movie, the director selectively put the scenes discussed with all the actors into the feature film. It seems to be a retrospective review of Ruan Lingyu's life, but in fact, it is a dialogue between Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung, two women of different eras, across time and space.
There is no lack of portrayal of female images in "Ruan Lingyu". The director focuses his lens on urban women in the thirties and forties of the twentieth century. It is worth noting that women in real life have not been completely updated in terms of ideology, although women have their own jobs and independent economies, and also have corresponding rights in politics and law, but the deep-rooted sense of male superiority and inferiority of women and the remnants of feudal ideology make women not really liberated from the patriarchal system, although there is an awakening of female consciousness and the shaping of a new female image in culture, but this is mostly an empty direction that has nothing to do with women's survival and is related to men's imagination (Han Qiuting, 2021) 。
In the thirties and forties of the twentieth century, under the influence of progressive literary and artistic trends, realist film creation techniques became one of the important forms of expression of film art. More and more feminist narrative films show women's awakening and growth by depicting women's sense of resistance and the pursuit of ideals, and convey unique feminist concepts. In the movie "The Goddess" starring Ruan Lingyu, Ruan's sister-in-law, as a civilian woman at the bottom of society, becomes a prostitute in the city in order to live and raise her children, and finally fights against the oppression and injustice added to her body by self-sacrifice. At the same time, films such as "The Singing Girl Red Peony" and "Gadgets" also focused on the social attributes of women, showing the plight of women in society by depicting suffering, and women's class identity foreshadowed the tragedy of the characters.
While shaping suffering, it also shows women's resistance and self-reliance in the face of patriarchal social gaze and oppression. In the movie "New Woman" starring Ruan Lingyu, Wei Ming's struggle runs through the film. She escaped her father's control, but suffered from marriage, rejected Dr. Wang's courtship and longed for equality and freedom, and she wanted to change her life and her daughter's life through her own efforts, but faced with social gossip and crowd criticism. In the end, death is a tragic way to make an indictment to the patriarchal oppressive society. In reality, Ruan Lingyu, like Ai Xia, or indirectly influenced by this film, chose to commit suicide, which is the collision between the awakened new women and the patriarchal culture, and the embodiment of the "defeat" in the struggle between the new women and the old literati (Dai Jinhua, 2021). Criticized by public opinion, full of suicide notes full of "terrible words", the new woman who longs for happiness and love, and pursues her own growth and value finally fights with her life under the scrutiny of social morality. The various "confrontations" that end in tragedy also show the social and political problems reflected by women's issues in a specific historical stage. In early films, most of the female characters were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, lacking due weight in gender relations and social discourse. However, most of the female characters in the film show their desire for their political attributes to be affirmed, their pursuit of free and equal social status, and their efforts to realize their own values.
Maggie Cheung and Ruan Lingyu have similar acting careers and transformation experiences. Traditional biographical films strive for a high degree of similarity between the demeanor and personality of the actor and the biographer, and can even make the audience forget the actor, so as to achieve the effect of "the actor is himself". But in the movie Ruan Lingyu, the director does not want the audience to forget the existence of Maggie Cheung, but wants to show Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung, two women who are similar but completely different. With the help of the form of meta-film, at Ruan Lingyu's funeral, when the sadness reached its climax, the sentence "Ka! Maggie breathed" stopped the progression of emotions, reminding the audience that this was Maggie Cheung's interpretation of Ruan Lingyu. When Maggie Cheung interprets Ruan Lingyu's films, she will always be edited with the original, and when the audience is substituted into the image of the delicate and sad Ruan Lingyu, they will suddenly jump to Maggie Cheung's interview clip. The director seems to intend to let these two women in different eras form a dialogue that spans history, to explore the different choices of women in different eras.
In the movie, Maggie Cheung was asked, "In that era, Ruan Lingyu encountered such a thing and chose to commit suicide." If the same thing happened to you now, would you not kill yourself." "I'm not going to give them [those who manipulate public opinion] the satisfaction of letting them know that I'm unhappy, let alone suicidal," she said. At that time, Maggie Cheung was experiencing the failure of a love life, and there was also a scandal that her boyfriend outside the circle had defrauded her of her assets. From a certain point of view, she seems to have a similar situation to Ruan Lingyu back then, and has become the headline of lace news and the talk of the public after dinner. From the perspective of the times, we can find that women have given different answers to almost the same questions. Although in the contemporary discourse system, women have not been completely liberated from the gaze of men, and have not achieved true freedom and equality, they have gone from "only regretting death" in the face of human words in the past, to responding, and even to confront and fight back. Women are no longer the role of the bottom society who only rebels with death, and their self-perception of autonomy and social value is further awakened, and they are more mixed with resilience in softness, which is also the director's own interpretation of the changes in women's consciousness with the help of Ruan Lingyu and Maggie Cheung's interspersed attitudes.
The feminist dilemma in literary and artistic works
As a feminist film, "Ruan Lingyu" constructs and portrays a female image with distinctive characteristics, either brave and independent, or innocent and courageous. As far as her feminist narrative technique is concerned, it still shows the dilemma of feminism, and to a certain extent, it also shows the narrative dilemma of the same type of women's literary and artistic works.
In the movie, Ruan Lingyu was overwhelmed by the pressure of public opinion and the blow of her lover, and finally chose to commit suicide. After the party, she tidied up, wrote a suicide note in front of the desk, ate the porridge with medicine gracefully as usual, and asked "Do you love me" over and over again in front of her sleeping lover, and finally passed away. The curtain call of a life full of regret and sorrow also contains the director's compassion for the fate of women conveyed through the film. In women's films of the same period, such as "Rouge Buckle", Ruhua also celebrates fruitless love with death and waiting. Women always seem to be moving towards self-sacrifice on the path of self-awakening, and a kind of compassion and sorrow for women's rebellion and fruitless is full of them. The film comes to an abrupt end in this sadness, but it lacks reflection on how women can further self-awaken and redeem themselves. Women rebel against the patriarchal society at the cost of their lives, and this perspective of compassion and compassion seems to pull women back into the scrutiny of traditional patriarchal values. On the premise of acknowledging gender differences, women have once again become weak and powerless subjects. With the continuous development of society and the continuous change of thought, feminism also has more room for development, and should not just stay in a narrative full of compassion.
The portrayal of male characters in the film is also mentioned above. Compared to the courage and decisiveness of the female characters, the male characters are cowardly and wandering. In the movie "Ruan Lingyu", the image of male characters is inextricably linked to historical facts, and in some feminist films of the same period, such as "Red Rose and White Rose", "Rouge Buckle" and "Xi Shi Eye", the wandering Zhenbao, the cowardly Twelve Shao, and the little seedling who reneged on the agreement...... From a female perspective, male roles are often negative and antagonistic. This includes a break in the male discourse system, but in the real society, it is not only the male side that causes the dilemma of women. Women who stand on the side of men to trap themselves, and men who can think through the lens of women, are also excluded from the discourse system shaped by the film. This seems to simplify the complex and three-dimensional social problems to the rigid gender opposition between men and women, and lacks a more comprehensive reflection on the plight of women.
epilogue
I chose the film "Ruan Lingyu" because I was attracted by the film's unique narrative technique, in which the meta-film and the multi-layered film narrative can glimpse the changes and growth of women's consciousness in the context of different eras. Reminiscent of today's film and television literary works, there are many "big heroine" plots, in which women are no longer dependents, but individuals with independent discourse. Men often take on the role of auxiliary or even "foil".
Marx once said in The Holy Family: "The development of a certain historical epoch can always be determined by the degree to which women move towards freedom, because in the relations between women and men, and between women and men, the triumph of human nature over animal nature is most clearly expressed, because the degree of women's emancipation is the natural criterion for measuring universal emancipation." Looking back at the thirties of the twentieth century in which Ruan Lingyu lived and the end of the twentieth century in which Maggie Cheung lived, until the present, the characters in women's works reflect the trend of film and cultural thought, and also show the living conditions of women. From "people are terrible, death is a pity" to respond to counterattacks, and then to the modern "big heroine", on the one hand, it shows the more obvious development and transformation of female roles and feminism, and on the other hand, it is also the epitome of the development of the times, a kind of "mimetic environment" that originates from society and transcends reality. In the world constructed by literary and artistic works, women are independent and have equal rights with men, but in reality, the development of feminism is still a long way to go. From the perspective of narrative, literary and artistic works of different eras face different dilemmas, but what remains unchanged is that the continuous development and exploration of the connotation of "feminism" is still a topic that needs to be adhered to.
[References]
[1] Dai Jinhua. (1994). Invisible Women: Women and Women's Films in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Contemporary Cinema (06).
[2] Wan Jing. (2015). On the Relationship between the Shaping of Female Images in Film and the Background of the Times: A Case Study of Chinese Films in the Thirties of the Twentieth Century. Drama House (10), 154-155.
[3] Han Qiuting.The Construction of Women's Identity under the Layered Structure——A Case Study of the Film Ruan Lingyu[J].Sound and Screen World,2021,(13):50-51.
[4] Yang Yuanying. (2021). Century Girls: Ruan Lingyu, Yu Lan, Gong Li. Journal of Guizhou University (Art Edition) (01), 23-30+2. doi:10.15958/j.cnki.gdxbysb.2021.01.005.
[5] Ling Jing & Deng Fa. (2014). A Feminist Analysis of Kwan Jinpeng's Films. Today's Media (08), 12-14.
[6] Peng Qian. (2015). The Growth of Women's Consciousness: A Case Study of New Women. Popular Literature and Art (15), 181.
(This article is the 2023 final assignment of "Feature Film and Documentary Creation" of the School of Journalism and Communication of Peking University, and won the "2023 Excellent Film and Television Review of the New Youth Film Night Sailing Boat")
New Youth Movie Night Sailing Boat
Editor | Sun Yannan
The picture comes from the Internet