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Directed by Joan Chen
Starring Lu Lu and Lopsang
USA/China, 1999
Rated R (sex, adult themes)
LOVE IN HELL
During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s and 70’s, youth were sent down into rural areas of China to be ‘educated.’ It was a Communist idea that planned to eliminate the economic strife in such places by molding teenagers into what the government desired. Joan Chen’s profoundly moving and even disturbing debut directorial achievement, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, is an outright indictment of that time of upheaval and the Communist mentality. It also works as a story about love, naiveté, and violation. I know little about the Chinese Revolution and its repercussions on the world and the nation, but Xiu Xiu is deeply affecting nonetheless, with its inclusion of simple emotions like love and hopelessness being its link to humanity through its painful politics.
The film’s title character, Xiu Xiu (Lu Lu), lives in the province of Chengdu, and is sent down to a small town with scores of other girls to do hard labor for the Revolution’s Youth Education. She leaves behind her teary parents, a sister, and a boyfriend who is allowed to stay in the town because his family has connections. After a year of toil, she is assigned to do work with Lao Jin (Lopsang), an odd horse herder. Officials tell her that it is because she has an outstandingly pleasing record and that she will be able to go home to Chengdu in six months. She reluctantly goes. She is informed that Lao Jin has been castrated so she should not anticipate any inappropriate behavior on his part.
Xiu Xiu is left in a beautiful wilderness and, to her dismay, finds that she and Lao Jin will be forced to stay in the same tent. She is a teenager and acts as a teenager would under the circumstances- she complains, is shy, and, after six months, packs her belongings and sits outside the tent waiting for someone to come and pick her up as the officials had promised. She doesn’t realize that she has been abandoned. Furthermore, she is oblivious to Lao Jin’s love for her, though he acts as both a father figure and friend to her throughout the movie.
Xiu Xiu learns from a peddler that she has been left in isolation and forgotten and he promises her that he will get her back to Chengdu. He is young and softens her for the kill, then has sex with her. Lao Jin sits in quiet distress every night thereafter as he watches a number of men promise Xiu Xiu that they can send her back to her hometown, then violate her.
Joan Chen, one of the best imported actors of recent times, will not be able to step foot on Chinese soil any time soon. She filmed Xiu Xiu illegally, without the consent of the Chinese government and in complete isolation so she would not be caught. Because of this, the film does not belong to China as To Live does and it was allowed to do the film festival circuit, get recognized, and be released in the United States. It has received a warm reception in the States, but it will never be shown in Communist China. Its condemnation of Communism is overt and powerful and brave. Just as Warren Beatty fought to make Reds, Chen probably went through turmoil and danger to make Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. It is a labor of love for her- she took on the roles of co-writer (the film is based on the novel, Tian Yu), executive producer, producer, and director and hired a very talented DP to shoot the spectacular landscapes of rural China. The lead actors, Lu Lu and Lopsang, are very good and bring to life an uneasy friendship between two different people in the struggle of China’s upheaval. It was a time of bitterness and little understanding between people and government.
Obviously, the filming of the movie was a hectic one, which may explain why some parts of Xiu Xiu hop unevenly from one part of the story to another. That is the only flaw I can detect in the movie. Xiu Xiu is, in my eyes, a sacred film, not only because of the courage it must have taken to make it (Chen was recognized this year with the National Board of Review’s International Freedom of Expression award), but because it promises a great career for Joan Chen and it does not go stale from its pervasive and stirring political statement, but grows from it. Xiu Xiu is accessible because it touches on how its heroine (who is not a Wonderwoman, but a breathing, vulnerable girl) is taken advantage of and how her only source of love is a distant but beautiful relationship with Lao Jin. We are lucky to have this movie.
By Andrew Chan
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