Sumptuous Revolutionary Erotics - two films by Jiang Wen

(1) In the Heat of the Sun (1994)

“My stories always take place in the summer. In the heat of the sun, people were forced to reveal more of their bodies and it was more difficult to conceal their desires. In my memory, the Sun always shone brightly during this period, as if there were only one season: summer.”

An eroticized fantasy about China’s Cultural Revolution through the stories of a bunch of Beijing youths. An orgy of revolutionary aesthetics.

The English translation of the film’s original Chinese title (Yangguang Canlan de Rizi) does not quite capture the sentiment conveyed by the Chinese phrase, which is nostalgia, pretty much to the same tune of ‘good old days…’ Thus, contrary to the usual portrayal of the Cultural Revolution as the darkest moment in recent Chinese history, an interpretation that is deeply lodged in the Western mind as well as sanctioned by the official Chinese discourse, Jiang Wen, the film’s director and script writer, describes this period as an eternal summer that is sunny, passionate and sultry. Through the apparently trivial stories of a group of Beijing youths—set free from the authority due to the total societal chaos of the period—the film brings out to the fullest extent the sensuous and aesthetic aspects of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Compared to many artistic representations that simply condemn the Cultural Revolution and Maoism in general, this film perhaps ironically provides one hint or two as to just why that traumatic experience took place, and why people were so deeply drawn into that collective frenzy.

(2) The Sun Also Rises (2007)

“If it’s not the hand that touched the buttocks, was it the buttocks that touched the hand?”

A visually seductive, sophisticated, but ultimately puzzling story about human desire set in the ‘red’ China under Mao.

In China, 1976 (the year of Mao’s death which also marks the end of the Cultural Revolution), a countryside youth (starring Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie Chan) lives with his ‘mad’ single mother, under the mystery about his father’s identity. Soon, a middle-aged urban intellectual is to be ‘sent down’ to this village to be ‘reformed’, bringing his own mystery past at a college, involving sex scandal, intrigue, and possibly murder. The two mysteries unfurl and intersect, and are finally ‘resolved’ when the story takes us back to 1958 (the year of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ movement). The non-linear and jumpy narrative makes the film puzzling at the odd places, but generally the theme of sexual desire looms large. Since desire is always depicted in its interaction with the socio-political, this film is also a vivid recapitulation of the social and political life in Mao’s China. Remarkably, while doing all these, the film manages to be quite funny and light-hearted at not a few places; and the soundtracks are superb too!

Though perhaps not as famous as some other Chinese heavyweight directors of recent times, Jiang Wen’s artistic achievement in this film is surely not inferior, and he remains a deeply interesting figure for his often romantic and nostalgic representation of Maoist China—it is said that he owns many portraits of Mao at home. This film of his is sophisticated and defies any simple reading, but watching it will very likely prove to be an enjoyable aesthetic and intellectual experience.