Every now and then I need to temporarily slip
away from the Shaw Brothers' martial arts films and watch a melodrama or
a Chinese Opera (Huangmei Diao). Just for something different and to remind
myself that Shaw was much more than just action films. Those seem to be mainly
what people and boutique film distributors are interested in these days.
This one will definitely not be getting a blue ray treatment, at least outside
of Hong Kong. It very much falls into the melodrama category like an exploding
peach. Love and romance is like walking in a mine field. That shouldn't be
too surprising since it is based on a novel by Chiung Yao, a female Taiwanese
romance writer who fled from the Mainland along with her family in 1949.
Many of those mushy Brigitte Lin Taiwanese romances early in her career are
based on her books. The Shaw's picked up a few as well.
Poor Yung Wei goes to spend time with her
relatives in the Taiwanese countryside while her parents (Kao Pao-shu and
Liu Fen) try to put their marriage together. Yung Wei is played by Fang Ying,
one of Shaw's sweeter actresses, the girl next door type and I don't think
they even tried to make her into an action actress like they did with almost
all their female actors at some point. It is a lovely farmhouse with a courtyard
and small cottages surrounding it. It is very rural with farming and ducks
and with forests and a beautiful lake nearby. Tranquility and peace. Just
take it easy. Fat chance.
Like Tolstoy wrote "All happy families are
alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.". This family gulps
up drama like a flesh-eating bacteria. The family is made up of the matriarch
(Ou Yang Sha-fei) who is constantly trying to keep everyone calm, the father
(Yan Jun - also the director) who at one time or another loses his temper
and slaps his kids around, the eldest son (Wang Hsieh) in a non-action role,
the younger son (Kiu Chong) and the daughter (Ching Li in an early role).
The younger son makes a beeline for Yung Wei and is so annoying that in most
films he would be run over by a truck, the daughter falls for an artist (Yueh
Hua) who is flaky and mental, the older son is in love with a Mountain girl
Lulu (Pak Lam) who flashes her cleavage around like school medals. It is
just one burst of hormones after another. The father hates the Mountain people
- the original people in Taiwan before the Chinese. I kept telling Yung Wei
to just go home. A disintegrating marriage could not be worse than this.
Of course, there are happy endings all around except for the audience who
stayed through this.
