Ai nu
- 1972
- 1h 31m
Ajouter une intrigue dans votre langueThe innocent Ai Nu is sold to a brothel run by evil Madam Chun Yi, who falls in love with her at first sight. Quickly becoming the brothel's most desirable courtesan, Ai Nu climbs the ranks ... Tout lireThe innocent Ai Nu is sold to a brothel run by evil Madam Chun Yi, who falls in love with her at first sight. Quickly becoming the brothel's most desirable courtesan, Ai Nu climbs the ranks in Chinese society. Meanwhile, she secretly plots bloody revenge against all who have wron... Tout lireThe innocent Ai Nu is sold to a brothel run by evil Madam Chun Yi, who falls in love with her at first sight. Quickly becoming the brothel's most desirable courtesan, Ai Nu climbs the ranks in Chinese society. Meanwhile, she secretly plots bloody revenge against all who have wronged her.
- Director
- Writer
- Stars
- Wu Hua-tien
- (as Mei Sheng Fan)
- Liao Kuo-kuang
- (as Hao Chen)
- Governor Chou
- (as Hua-Lung Szema)
Avis en vedette
I also thought the cinematography is beautiful, especially at the beginning when camera captures the slow dance of Ai Nu in contrast to the corpse covered by snow.
The fight scene is also rather good. In other words, a perfect 10/10.
The film has a legendary, classical feel to it, and is absolutely not self-conscious about the role of its female leads. The plot twists and turns down to its tragic denouement, breathtaking in its melodrama and beauty. I don't know enough about this but it felt very rooted in chinese culture , and had the classical structure of a greek or shakespearian tragedy.
It is also beautifully filmed, and has many of those chinese fencing scenes the mass public has only really just become familiar with in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. But the latter is really not a patch on the earlier film.
There may be many more like this - I don't know - and although it didn't feel formulaic to me, perhaps it might to the chinese audience. So I only gave it eight, rather than the nine that was tempting me.
So why is this film so unknown, alone and unrated? That, I think, is the result of the unfortunate terms of its original release. Subtitled chinese movies at the time would appeal only to a specialist audience - (and Enter the Dragon had not yet appeared to change all that ) . But the specialist audience would instantly have been put off by the unfortunate "Confessions" marketing title, which immediately put it into the category of the contemporary naff British comedy series "Confessions of a window cleaner" and the like. Many a time I have tried to recommend this film title to friends only to be looked at incredulously as if - oh dear - how pathetic. Not that they would have found it easy to see it - it can't have enjoyed wide release.
Now is the time for re-release.
Meanwhile, I'm not an expert in the genre but, for me, the action scenes aren't really a patch on fare such as House of Flying Daggers or (my favourite) Hero. This predates both by quite a while, of course.
Worth a watch if you like this kind of thing, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
Eventually, it becomes clear that our hero has a plan in place to get the sweet, sweet vengeance she so deserves. To execute this plan, she plays into her predicament and uses the lust of those she seeks to destroy against them. She doesn't wait for someone to save her, she saves herself - or, rather, enables herself to get her hands bloody enough that she can find some sort of internal peace. It's here where the film starts to get a little more conventional, but even the most tried-and-tested of its genre beats hit just a little differently due to the context in which they're used. What starts out as a fairly slow, one-by-one kind of thing soon escalates into all-out carnage, and the jaw-dropping final act is a cathartic cacophony of chaos soaked in so much blood you'd be forgiven for thinking you were watching a pulpy Kung fu flick from much later in the genre's cycle. The choreography is as impressive as you'd expect from a Shaw Brothers production, but it's slightly more blunt and even scrappy so that it better meshes with the generally brutal nature of the overall film. The camerawork takes a similarly gritty approach, often favouring tighter compositions and even making use of some handheld shots. It makes use of elegant wirework to give its protagonist a somewhat otherworldly feel, almost like she's a ghost who has returned to haunt - or, rather, claim the souls of - those who killed her (perhaps, and this is purposefully reaching, this implies that her spirit, her true self, died when she was sold into sexual slavery and robbed of the life she could have lived). Somehow, these stylised fight scenes don't clash with the affair's dark tone and heavy subject matter, and they're honestly really satisfying in their own gruesome way because we don't have an ounce of sympathy for the baddies our hero is so effectively slicing up. The picture's ultimate conclusions about the indiscriminately destructive nature of revenge feel like something out of a late-stage martial arts movie, which tend to be more nihilistic than their predecessors. The picture is utterly devoid of hope, because even if the lead achieves her goal of killing those who harmed her, she's been irrevocably damaged and entirely consumed by a drive for vengeance. Love and hate have become tangled together, both used solely for murderous purposes, and there's a sense that even the hero has no real concept of coming out of this... well, I would say "unscathed" but perhaps "at all" is better.
I haven't even mentioned yet that the fact that the flick has a female protagonist, let alone one who is never saved by a man, is extremely commendable (especially for the era). While she is placed in sexual situations and treated as an object by those in the film, none of those scenes are even accidentally titillating (there's no on-screen nudity from the main actor) and it's clear that the movie itself does not condone the behavior it's depicting. The lead is a fully fledged character with her own arc and no need to take the moral high ground, every bit as complex and capable as any of her male counterparts in other Kung fu flicks from the time.
Overall, this is a distinct and affecting feature that doesn't feel overly distasteful despite its odd, potentially discordant mixture of genre and subject matter. It makes you uncomfortable, but it doesn't do it for the wrong reasons. It feels ahead of its time in most ways that matter. Blending beautiful on-set scenery and costuming with vicious violence of the most despicable nature, it sheds light on the realities of an industry often glossed over by films of its kind while also delivering on the cathartic Kung fu excellence you'd expect from those same films, all while somehow feeling cohesive.
It isn't perfect, though. The middle portion of the picture is a lot slower than it could have been, but it also speeds through an important transitional period in its protagonist's journey. There is a somewhat unrefined repetition that occurs when its in media res opening is finally caught up to, and some of the background performers who appear nude or semi-nude look uncomfortably young (especially three courtesans who appear in a four-way sex scene later on in the story and genuinely don't seem to have been eighteen at the time of filming based on what little information I can gleam from IMDb). There is also the occasional bit of clumsy choreography that feels like it could have been nailed if just one more take were to have been done.
Still, this is an unconventional and engaging effort that really does have one heck of a climactic massacre. If you can stomach its brutality, it's worth watching.
Le saviez-vous
- ConnexionsFeatured in Cinema Hong Kong: The Beauties of the Shaw Studio (2003)
- Bandes originalesCome In Number 51, Your Time Is Up
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Performed by Pink Floyd
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