Angels Wear White 嘉年华 Jia Nian Hua dir. Vivian Qu
What a movie! A gripping and immersive police procedural (a la gritty Broadchurch S3 but much more effective) searingly, brutally throwing a light on the way the sexualisation/objectification of girls/women’s bodies entrap and limit the lives of three women/girls, and how our social, health and justice systems fail them. This is a picture of patriarchy rich in symbology and metaphor, yet it shouts loudly enough to make its message clear. I just hope Vivian Qu gets the funding she deserves to follow up this film with equally incisive, meaningful, and masterly storytelling.
The three female leads are exemplary. Vicky Chen is Mia, a teenage cleaner/receptionist at a seaside resort hoping to carve a subsistence life and leave behind the past from which she is running. Peng Jing is Lili, her slightly older colleague who possesses an air of worldliness, and to whom Mia looks for protection and guidance. Lili uses her appearance and plays on sexual appeal to survive. When Mia witnesses an incident involving two schoolgirls, including Wen (Zhou Meijun) and an adult man, all four of their lives are changed irrevocably.
This film will stay with you long after you’ve seen it. It is about shame, and the centrality of shame to patriarchy; how shame is the tool patriarchy uses to reify itself. It is cinema at its best and in my humble opinion, it deserved the plaudits it won at the Venice Film Festival.
