The Chinese gardener's daughters
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Chinese gardener's daughters |
| Original title | Les Filles du botaniste |
| Country of production | France , Canada |
| original language | Mandarin |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Dai Sijie |
| script | Dai Sijie, Nadine Perront |
| production | Lise Fayolle |
| music | Eric Lévi |
| camera | Guy Dufaux |
| cut | Jean-François Bergeron |
| occupation | |
| |
The Daughters of the Chinese Gardener (Original: Les Filles du botaniste ) is a 2006 French-Canadian fictional film directed by Dai Sijie about the forbidden love affair between two women in the People's Republic of China in the 1980s, an era in which homosexuality was prevalent was officially outlawed and was considered abnormal and subversive. The film was released in German cinemas on June 28, 2007.
action
Li Min, a young woman who lives in an orphanage , is given the chance to do a six-week internship with the renowned botany professor Chen. The professor, a specialist in medicinal herbs, lives with his 20-year-old daughter An isolated on a small island, surrounded by exotic flora with all kinds of tropical plants.
When Li visits the professor in his botanical garden, she quickly finds out that Chen is a strict despot who shows himself relentlessly towards her for the smallest mistakes. On the other hand, she quickly befriends her daughter An, who also suffers from the authority of the professor. The two soon get closer and out of initial sympathy, affection grows, which ends in erotic attraction and finally in homosexual passion. To camouflage her secret love, Li accepts the advice of Ans unsuspecting brother Dan, a soldier stationed in Tibet , who is visiting his father for a few days. The marriage will allow Li, according to An's plan, to stay with her in the garden, since as the wife of a common soldier she is not allowed to move to his place of work.
An fails to hide her feelings for Li, so that her father can sense the true depth of the relationship between the friends. For her part, Li is mistreated by Dan during their honeymoon after discovering that his wife was not a virgin . Li then returns to An, tormented and distraught. A brief phase of happiness begins for the two of them, until the professor with heart disease surprises them while making love. Furious, he tries to attack Li with a machete, but is knocked down by his daughter with a shovel and suffers a heart attack , which leads to death in the hospital.
The two women are arrested and sentenced to death in a public trial for “socially damaging conduct” and “perverse motives” that would have led to the death of the professor. The film ends with the remains of the two littered in a lake.
Production notes
With The Daughters of the Chinese Gardener , the Chinese writer, screenwriter and director Dai Sijie, who lives in France, filmed an idea for a film that he got while reading a newspaper article about a lesbian couple sentenced to death. “ Two young women who worked in the same factory were sentenced to death and also suspected of murdering their father. That inspired us ”. His film, for which he also developed the scenario together with Nadine Perront , is not based on the report in the Chinese daily newspaper, but tells its own fictional story about a judiciary with traditional morals in China in the 1980s.
With the subject of the film, Dai Sijie takes up a taboo of the Chinese public that could play out in one way or another in today's China. Because although the legal situation in China has changed since the 1980s - the penal code was amended in 1997 and homosexuality was removed from the official list of mental illnesses four years later - same-sex love is still considered abnormal. Previously, homosexuality was considered an obscene crime that could result in public humiliation, fights and long imprisonment up to execution. So it is still not surprising that Chinese producers shied away from the risk and refused to cooperate. Furthermore, Dai Sijie was not given a shooting permit in China and instead had to shoot the film in Vietnam . The Chinese censors forced him to take this step with the latest guideline from the state film control authority that homosexual content "runs counter to the healthy lifestyle in China ".
The Chinese actress and singer Zhou Xun was originally intended to play the main role of Chen An , who was already involved in Sijie's debut work Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress , but failed to work at short notice. Instead, the Chinese actress Li Xiaoran , who was particularly popular with soap operas in her home country, and the French actress Mylène Jampanoï were hired .
Reviews
“The scenes are strung together here a little too predictably and stiffly. The statuary may be a characteristic of Eastern narrative styles. But Daï Sijie does not proceed as consistently here as his Taiwanese colleague Tsai Ming-liang, who in 2001 in What time is it there recorded every scene with a completely still camera and thereby demonstrated style. At Daï Sijie, this time the artistic effort does not go beyond the concern of philanthropy. "
“That doesn't just sound simple and pompous, it is. Dai Sijies The Chinese Gardener's Daughters is a poetry album kitsch turned into film. Even the tragic end of the story cannot change that. On the contrary, when the lovers are finally on trial because of their 'pathological sexual inclinations', the scenery appears just as absurd as everything else before. Your impending death sentence is also that of the film. "
“As coherent and visually as the romantic love story, to which Sijie was inspired by a short newspaper article about the death penalty of a lesbian couple, in all its colorful blooms, the political dimension of the film cannot be accused of a certain black and white Withdraw painting. The incursions of domestic and state violence are too drastic and immediate, so that the desired impression of authenticity is clouded by the ambiguous view of the original homeland. "
Awards
At the 2006 World Film Festival in Montreal , the film received the audience award and the award for “best artistic contribution”.
Web links
- The Chinese Botanist's Daughters in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Julia Schöppner in love in times of communism ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Film review on cineastentreff.de ; accessed on July 9, 2007
- ↑ cf. Margret Köhler in archive link ( memento of the original from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - accessed on July 9, 2007
- ↑ a b c cf. Cristina Moles Kaupp in archive link ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on July 9, 2007
- ↑ cf. Björn Becher on filmstarts.de Björn Becher: The Daughters of the Chinese Gardener 4,5 called on July 10, 2007
