PERFECT LIFE
China, 2008, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Emily Wang.
Perfect Life is a woman’s perspective on life in contemporary China. There are two principal characters. The first is a young woman, ambitious to leave her home town and study, embarrassed by her father, relying on help from her brother, eventually getting a job from a friend in a hotel in Hong Kong. There she meets a crippled character, rather engaging, who gets her to do a smuggling job. However, he is killed and she is stranded in the town in southern China and has to make a life for herself, making a futile and stupid marriage.
The other character, called in the translation Character, is an older woman who has had a hard life, describes what happened in her family, especially deaths and suicides, also makes a bad marriage, has three children, suffers brutality, finds herself wandering the streets.
This information is necessary and makes the plot rather more straightforward – if this is not known, the plot seems over-complex and audiences may be tempted to try to see whether the two women are really one and the same, or aspects of the same character.
The film uses the realistic style of photography in the cities of China and strives for an authentic atmosphere even as it tells the story of the two women whose life is nothing like the title of the film.
1.Chinese perspective on life? Modern life in China? The universal perspectives?
2.The cities, the mainland, Hong Kong? Modern, the old parts of the towns? The musical score and atmosphere?
3.The woman’s perspective, the writer-director, the central characters and what happens to them? The role of men?
4.The young girl, her life, going to the audition, disowning her father, the mouth organ, the failure, her going home in the train, throwing away the mouth organ, talking with her brother, his wanting money for trainers? Her work in the factory, making artificial limbs? Her going to see the woman and her brother, the woman’s anger? The brother getting her the job, the hotel, getting her photos taken?
5.The hotel, the crippled man, his interest, her putting on the clothes and being caught, his proposals to her, the meal, taking her to the show, her reaction? Continuing with the job, his persuading her to carry the painting, her travel, the promise of education money, her hopes?
6.The character of the crippled man, genial, his attention to the young woman, his double-dealing, art deals, the thugs, his phone calls and deception, his being bashed, his dying and the final photo?
7.The girl going to the city, lost, her marrying, her fate?
8.The other woman, older, the story of her family, the deaths, her hard life, marriage, children, in the market, the aerobics and the dancing?
9.The title and its irony in relationship to the two women?
