It's that time again! Continuing with the horror theme for October, this week's installment will be a double feature Thursday evening/night:
Dangerous Liaisons:
Green SnakePainted SkinBoth of these movies deal with women who are not what they seem. In both cases, they are seductive and alluring. Some are oblivious to their true nature while others suspect them the whole time. Both are based on traditional Chinese folklore -- instead of succubi, Asia has snake women and fox spirits.
First up is Tsui Hark's 1993 movie,
Green Snake. Based on a novel, which is itself based on the ancient folk story of Bai Suzhen (Lady White Snake). The gist is that a supernatural snake decides it wants to do good deeds to amass karma, so it turns into a human female. Then it falls in love with a scholar and seduces him until the monk Fa-hai discovers her secret, fights a big magical duel with her, and ends up locking her into the ground and builds Leifeng Pagoda over her to keep her trapped (as an aside, I've been to the pagoda in Hangzhou, so finding this was a double bonus for me). Over time, the story transformed from primarily a horror story into a romance and Fa-hai went from being the hero to being an inflexible meddler. This version includes a later character (her sister Lady Green Snake) and is mostly told from her point of view. Along the way it becomes a very trippy, sensual meditation on the nature of good and evil and love. Stars Joey Wang, the beautiful young ghost from
A Chinese Ghost Story (which Tsui Hark also directed).
It's like
The Little Mermaid meets
Lair of the White Worm. Also, it's the only HK film I've ever seen that has a Bollywood number in it.
The second half -- the recent (2008) film
Painted Skin -- has a similar theme -- supernatural woman is seducing a guy, somebody else figures it out and tries to stop her, which is both justified and a problem since there's a real love triangle here. It's mixed with some wuxia action and strong female characters to make for a pretty good movie. Based on a short story by Pu Songling, the Qing dynasty author. Pu was the Qing dynasty equivalent of the Brothers Grimm. He penned a collection of nearly 500 fantasy and horror stories, some of them original compositions, many of them traditional folk stories. This work was the inspiration for
Painted Skin,
A Chinese Ghost Story and numerous other HK horror films and TV shows over the years. One of the striking things about
Painted Skin is the quality. It was shot partly in Hong Kong and partly on the mainland, with funding from both HK backers and Beijing, and a $15 million budget and it shows. The film quality is excellent, the CGI is modern (and used sparingly, but to good effect). It's a good example of what Chinese film with a real budget can look like.
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