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11.The Ear Is Attached to a Woman
If, as noted above, Rubie functions in both films as a public,
intellectual ear that is able to hear and validate the various
voices that present themselves, she also serves as a private,
personal ear. In her CROSSINGS diary, she speaks to herself as
well as to the film's spectators. In both films, Rubie listens to
an array of personal problems voiced by those in her circle of
family, friends, and acquaintances. With few exceptions, all the
films’ characters talk to Rubie, and Rubie listens. As this
narrative ear, Rubie holds the plots of both films together,
giving them a structure, logic, and certain order.
Many directors are known for establishing on-going relationships
with actresses who act as representatives of the filmmakers’
concerns as well as entrees into other realms involving women,
the female psyche, and issues concerning feminine subjectivity.
Bergman’s relationship with Liv Ullmann comes immediately to
mind. In this case, Chan develops a rapport with Lindzay Chan in
these two features that allows him to explore not only issues of
cultural hybridity but also issues involving women and their
concerns. Moving from the textuality of the political discourses
of the films to the subjectivity of the "women’s
film," TO LIV(E) and CROSSINGS, in their stylistic and
generic hybridity, highlight issues that go beyond newspaper
headlines and immigration statistics. Although Chan works with a
Brechtian/Godardian alienation from his characters, using them
often as types to illustrate particular points, the filmmaker
also uses these characters in more conventional ways,
underscoring their individuality, allowing them to speak as
distinct entities as well as representatives of ideological
positions and abstract social categories.
To illustrate this point, it might be instructive to look at two
parallel scenes, one from TO LIV(E) and the other from CROSSINGS.
Both scenes involve Rubie having a tete-a-tete with another
woman. Each scene points to the intimacy between the women. Each
features a discussion of the situation of women drifting between
countries, roles, and emotions, adding to narrative information,
but also standing alone as discourses separate from the public
pronouncements of Rubie’s letters or her appearances on
American television.
In TO LIV(E), Rubie meets with her brother's fiancée, Teresa
(Josephine Ku) at Victoria Peak, overlooking the Hong Kong
skyline. The two are seated near a ledge, on opposite sides of
the frame, with the cityscape between them. Teresa voices her
concerns about going to Australia. She also talks about her
divorce and difficulties maintaining a relationship with her son
studying in the United Kingdom. On a short visit to Hong Kong,
the son went shopping with his father rather than taking time to
see his mother Teresa. Because of her divorce and the death of
her mother, Teresa feels cast adrift emotionally. Rubie listens
and sympathizes with Teresa. The sounds of the city below can be
heard throughout the scene. Rubie moves from her position screen
right to sit close to Teresa; the camera slowly moves in to frame
them close together on the ledge. When Rubie tries to reassure
Teresa that there will be plenty of Hong Kong emigrants to
befriend in Australia, Teresa counters that she and Tony want to
escape Hong Kong to get away from its people (i.e., those, like
Tony and Rubie’s parents who disapprove of a union between a
younger man and a divorced, older woman). The camera moves out
again, to show Rubie and Teresa in relation to the city, as the
two embrace each other at the scene’s conclusion.
In CROSSINGS, Rubie meets Mo-Yung in a café near Times Square.
The camera is positioned outside as the scene begins, then moves
inside to frame Rubie and Mo-Yung silhouetted against the
café’s window as the traffic of New York passes by outside.
Throughout the scene, the camera moves between the two women,
using a vase with dried flowers on the table as a pivotal point.
Mo-Yung talks about coming from Suzhou; Rubie talks about her features and the imagined Silk Route ancestor. Both laugh that they are "two barbarians invading New York."
The camera cuts away to a shot of Mo-Yung framed through the
café window, and the mood changes. They wonder about
Mo-Yung’s missing acquaintance, Carmen, who had also been
involved with Benny. Rubie fills Mo-Yung in on her own situation,
and her desire to get a green card and open America as a
possibility for her son. Mo-Yung asks, "What if your son
doesn’t like America and blames you?" When Rubie
replies that he can always go back, Mo-Yung counters, "Do
you think you can recreate the past just like that?" The
scene ends on a close shot of Mo-Yung putting out her cigarette
in an ashtray near the dried flowers, flanked by the empty coffee
cups.
These two scenes highlight elements that move the narratives into
the realm of the women’s film. In these scenes, the emphasis
is on the relationship between women, their solidarity in the
face of the trials of immigration, as well as in the face of
changing sexual mores and family relationships. Here, as friends,
mothers, lovers, ex-wives, fiancées, and confidantes, Rubie,
Teresa, and Mo-Yung illustrate the personal dimension of the
political concerns of 1997. Women experience a different type of
"crossing" than men. Traditional roles for women
dissolve in the Diaspora. Families become unhinged, scattered;
romantic relationships become more fleeting. Cast adrift by a
desire to escape from rigid families, ex-husbands, and the
feeling of being alienated from the traditional world in which
they were born and bred, these women move off to Australia and
New York with a different sense of loss, different fears, and for
reasons that go far beyond the political dynamics of 1997.
Following Rubie as the "ear," the camera in both scenes
invites the spectator to share these intimate moments.
These two scenes are not unique in either TO LIV(E) or CROSSINGS.
Rather, they form part of a pattern of scenes in which
women’s issues are voiced and Rubie listens to her
girlfriends’ concerns. In TO LIV(E), for example, Teresa
will only discuss her fears of death and abandonment with Rubie;
Tony must eavesdrop outside the bedroom door. In CROSSINGS,
female characters as diverse as the unnamed, unseen AIDS infected
prostitute at the clinic, Joey’s sister, and a next door
neighbor seek out Rubie as an ear for their stories. Mo-Yung
tells the story of her family to Rubie rather than Benny. These
acts of speaking and listening among the female characters propel
both films out from the orbits of the political essay or the
crime story.
Looking at the films from this perspective, as love stories and family melodramas, TO LIV(E) and CROSSINGS fit within three related subgenres that have become quite popular in Hong Kong after Thatcher’s visit to Beijing. The trend picked up even more after June 4, 1989. One subgenre features romantic entanglements and family problems that arise in Hong Kong around the issue of emigration; e.g., Shu Kei’s HU DU MEN/STAGEDOOR (1996). TO LIV(E) fits squarely in this subgenre. The second subgenre involves the trials and tribulations faced by new immigrants to America, Canada, Australia; some examples include Stanley Kuan’s FULL MOON IN NEW YORK (1990), Peter Chow’s PICKLES MAKE ME CRY (1987), Clara Law’s FLOATING LIFE (1996). CROSSINGS tends more toward this subgenre, although, like Allen Fong’s JUST LIKE WEATHER (1986), it really blends the two. The third subgenre is hinted at through Mo-Yung’s story; it involves mainland Chinese abroad in Hong Kong. Examples include Mabel Cheung’s ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT (1985) and the recent hit, Peter Chan’s COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY(1996). (see Law Kar)
In these subgenres, the relationship between
stories about the overseas Chinese and stories about Chinese or
Asian Americans becomes more problematic. Another set of
categories begins to dissolve as filmmakers born in Hong Kong,
trained in the United States, living sometimes in Hong Kong,
sometimes in America, make films about people who are themselves
between Hong Kong and America. Indeed, the Hong Kong/American
connection, including figures like Bruce Lee as well as
filmmakers as diverse as Tsui Hark and Evans Chan, is not unique
along the edges of what is usually described as Asian cinema. Ang
Lee, Peter Wang, and Edward Yang represent a Taiwan connection,
and Chen Kai-ge is the best known of those from the mainland who
have settled in the States. Ho Quang Minh connects Vietnam and
Switzerland, while Anh Hung Tran with SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA
(1993) has given the world its most critically acclaimed film in
Vietnamese about Vietnam, totally set in Vietnam, without leaving
France.
Like the in-between, transnational, transcultural characters they
depict, TO LIV(E) and CROSSINGS also defy easy classification.
However, while identities may be uncertain and fluctuating, the
issues these characters embody remain concrete and disturbingly
fixed.
Continue to Part VII: Endings
