1-4-2019
No Chinese film director has articulated the idea of sex abuses as a social and political message more amazingly than the Hong Kong talent Fruit Chan who received numerous international film nominations or awards for his artistic achievements in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Venice. Despite this, Chan’s name is rarely ever acclaimed publicly, let alone seriously, in the conservative society of Hong Kong. Perhaps this is because he is often associated as a bizarre and alternative film maker who has implacable interest in sad prostitutes and kinky stories. For Chan, movies are about discovering as much as uncovering the people suffering in the dark underworld of Hong Kong society and to the people who are indifferent to these sufferings in Hong Kong.
His recent movie Three Husbands, full of artistic symbolism, is no exception: Siu Mui is a mentally retarded girl who was raped by her brutal father. She got pregnant and gave birth to a baby. She was then ‘sold’ to a handicapped fisherman who forced her into prostitution on his boat. One of the customers was a pier worker. He paid the fisherman a good sum so that Siu Mui could re-marry him. However, she was found to carry a ‘sickness’ which made her desire sex 24 hours a day. Finally, the father, fisherman and husband resolved to fully exploit Siu Mui by bringing her back to the boat as a full-time prostitute and they cruise aimlessly at sea to look for a resurrection of themselves.
Why this story? Lavish of artistic symbolism, the film gives in great amounts of similes, metaphors and allegories. The shocking scene is an eel being put into the private part of the actress and her pain and joy perhaps symbolize the ironic situation. It seems that Chan wants to say that the great cry that rises from our city, louder than our busy traffic, is all in very deed for this — that we produce everything particularly wealth except critical thinking, decency and integrity of her people. The very scoundrel, immoral and ignorant crowds here in Hong Kong scrambled for the greatest self-interests but, intentionally resulting in unintentionally, scrambled into a prison cage of their own making finally. The color film of Three Husbands gradually came into being a black and white movie while the story went on. What does it symbolize?
Although Three Husbands is a very erotic movie, very few audience will derive pleasure from the sexual disorders as Chan, with good reason, treated the love making scenes as appalling as possible so that the audience will be driven to think in place of being sexually aroused. Perhaps this film is all about ‘proper art’ (static and not exciting anything to move or do anything) but not ‘improper art’, such terms as being said in the famous book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
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