At
the suggestion of the editor, I rented the DVD The Chinese
Botanist’s Daughter, directed by Dai Seijie, who
first gained international recognition with his exotic Balzac
and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002). The film played
at the 2006
Montreal World Film Festival.
It didn’t take long to fall in love with the breathtakingly
gorgeous, lush green landscape, and as the film developed, the
2 sensuous lesbians that were the subject of the film: forbidden
love in China.
But being engrossed
by a film doesn’t necessarily mean it was good. So I decided
to let 3-4 weeks pass before writing it up.
If most good films
are the sums of their characters and characterizations, two
of the four characters are woefully stereotyped. The strict,
intolerant botanist Father to one of the lesbians, for whom
herbs and plants are as deserving of his attention as is his
daughter; and the son, who, on a leave from the army, believes
he has fallen in love with Min Li (played by Li Xiaoran), an
orphan who has come to study with the botanist. The brother's
gross insensitivity and brutal manner are so clichéd
as to be almost laughable. And when it comes to being numb-dumb
to feedback, his not getting it stretches the limits of credulity:
he not only doesn’t notice the girl he wants to merry
can’t stand him, but that she’s in love with his
sister.
But despite these
character mishaps, the developing and totally engaging off-limits
love affair between the precious Mi Li and sympathetic Cheng
An (Li Xiaoran) is what consumes and consummates the film. 
Co-staring
in the film is the landscape, both seen and heard. Woven into
their relationship is the exotic flora that rustles and shimmers
against their bodies as they explore their environment and each
other, the mist that soft scarves them, and the sounds of cool,
trickling water the hot flesh can’t refuse.
Eventually the Father
catches them in the act, and the brother, now married to Min
Li, must beat her up to address his humiliation. As for the
lovers, since lesbian love cannot survive the prevailing winds
in China, the only viable option
for Min and Cheng is the best and the worst of both worlds.
So
with a plot thinner than rice paper, why am I still recommending
this film? Because it does what all good films are supposed
to do: get you to get involved with and care about the characters.
Despite the films many lapses into melodrama and the under-written
male characters, the viewer cannot help but to empathize with
these very decent young women as women, who, before they are
lesbians are people who love and care for each other. What makes
this film linger, or rise above its many flaws, is that it sheds
light on what is tragic in the human condition that especially
concerns couples who care deeply for each other, but, because
of circumstance, are not able to consummate their caring. Seijie’s
rendering of what the Greek’s understood by tragedy –
an event that is all too rare in film today -- insists that
I give this film 3.5 out of 5 stars.
