Host Shaoyi Sun Recommends: A Girl from Hunan

A Girl from Hunan (Xiang nü xiao xiao) (1986)

Based on a story by Shen Congwen, a veteran Chinese writer whose
works are famed for their subtle critique of both Chinese tradition and
modernity, A Girl from Hunan tells the story of a young girl’s
arranged marriage in the 1920s with a two-year-old child and her
predetermined tragic life that followed. Beneath the tranquil surface of
a pastoral lifestyle lies the filmmaker’s passionate voice that speaks
against a culture that victimizes the girl and at the same time turns
the victimized into a victimizer. The cruel nature of local tradition is
calmly revealed and subtly scrutinized in scenes where an unchaste
widow is stripped naked and marched as a spectacle before being drowned,
and where the child bride Xiaoxiao, the girl from Hunan, swallows a
handful of incense ash in hopes of getting rid of her illegitimate baby.
The movie is among the first group of works that led Chinese cinema out
of the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

What makes Xie Fei’s critique of the child bride tradition unique
lies not in his outright call for a change, but in the fact that
Xiaoxiao, a few years after her own son was born, continues this
tradition by taking a child bride home. History repeats itself as we
watch Xiaoxiao, in high spirit, getting ready for her little son’s
wedding.

A Girl from Hunan sets the tone in both style and subject matter for Xie Fei’s later works. With the exception of Black Snow,
Xie Fei’s films are all set in the periphery of China, and all of them
are concerned with the fate of women. While the beautiful landscape of
Tibet, Mongolia, Hunan, and the lake-surrounded village propels Xie to
shoot his scenes in a more measured pace and to move his camera in a
more tranquil and smooth manner, thus making his films exquisitely
poetic, it cannot be denied that, underneath the pastoral scenery, the
recurring theme of human beings’ futile struggle with fate runs through
all his films.

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