My Mother is a Belly Dancer
Dec. 4th, 2006 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonWell, not mine, but the mothers in this very interesting sounding movie:
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Hong Kong is famous for its macho kung fu and gangster movies.
Director Lee Kung-lok's "My Mother is a Belly Dancer" is a rare and heartwarming look at a female Hong Kong demographic that gets much derision and little appreciation — the working-class housewife, known locally as "see lai."
In America, they're known as "soccer moms" — busy suburban women who ferry their children to soccer practice. The Hong Kong equivalent has a more derogatory image — gossipy, lack of fashion sense, uneducated.
The mink-wearing, Louis Vuitton-obsessed rich Hong Kong housewife who rides around town in a Rolls Royce, commonly known as a "tai tai," is more familiar to the public consciousness.
The women known as "see lai" are a different breed.
Director Lee paints a grim, touching picture of them in "Belly Dancer." The English title is a misnomer. The literal translation of the Chinese title — "It's not easy being a see lai" — better conveys the theme.
In "Belly Dancer," the "see lai" are the downtrodden underdogs — hardworking, loving wives and mothers abused by their husbands and children, unable to escape because of their lack of education.
Lee tells the story of four suppressed women — a garbage collector struggling to make ends meet, a teenage mother, an abandoned wife and another housewife who's constantly berated by her son and husband — who escape their woes and bond by learning how to belly dance.
"Belly Dancer" moves audiences because it avoids clichés and idealized endings. There's undoubtedly humor to the mismatch of middle-aged Chinese women shaking their hips and bottoms on the roof of a public housing estate.[1]
But the director is careful not to cast belly dancing as a panacea. At the end of the day, it's a welcome respite from the women's troubled lives, but not a cure. They return to their unpleasant homes and soldier on.
That's the message director Lee wants audiences to go home with — that in this rich, developed society, working-class women don't have it easy.
The film's website is http://www.focusfirstcuts.com/ and you can see a Quicktime trailer there--can't provide a direct link, but click on Film Projects, then Project 1 Hong Kong, then trailer. Unfortunately the main page has sound that you can't turn off, so you'll have to navigate away from that to hear the trailer. I hope this gets distributed over here somehow--the subtitles are a good sign...
[1] probably about as much humor as there is to the mismatch of any non-Arab women shaking their hips and bottoms, but whatever.
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Hong Kong is famous for its macho kung fu and gangster movies.
Director Lee Kung-lok's "My Mother is a Belly Dancer" is a rare and heartwarming look at a female Hong Kong demographic that gets much derision and little appreciation — the working-class housewife, known locally as "see lai."
In America, they're known as "soccer moms" — busy suburban women who ferry their children to soccer practice. The Hong Kong equivalent has a more derogatory image — gossipy, lack of fashion sense, uneducated.
The mink-wearing, Louis Vuitton-obsessed rich Hong Kong housewife who rides around town in a Rolls Royce, commonly known as a "tai tai," is more familiar to the public consciousness.
The women known as "see lai" are a different breed.
Director Lee paints a grim, touching picture of them in "Belly Dancer." The English title is a misnomer. The literal translation of the Chinese title — "It's not easy being a see lai" — better conveys the theme.
In "Belly Dancer," the "see lai" are the downtrodden underdogs — hardworking, loving wives and mothers abused by their husbands and children, unable to escape because of their lack of education.
Lee tells the story of four suppressed women — a garbage collector struggling to make ends meet, a teenage mother, an abandoned wife and another housewife who's constantly berated by her son and husband — who escape their woes and bond by learning how to belly dance.
"Belly Dancer" moves audiences because it avoids clichés and idealized endings. There's undoubtedly humor to the mismatch of middle-aged Chinese women shaking their hips and bottoms on the roof of a public housing estate.[1]
But the director is careful not to cast belly dancing as a panacea. At the end of the day, it's a welcome respite from the women's troubled lives, but not a cure. They return to their unpleasant homes and soldier on.
That's the message director Lee wants audiences to go home with — that in this rich, developed society, working-class women don't have it easy.
The film's website is http://www.focusfirstcuts.com/ and you can see a Quicktime trailer there--can't provide a direct link, but click on Film Projects, then Project 1 Hong Kong, then trailer. Unfortunately the main page has sound that you can't turn off, so you'll have to navigate away from that to hear the trailer. I hope this gets distributed over here somehow--the subtitles are a good sign...
[1] probably about as much humor as there is to the mismatch of any non-Arab women shaking their hips and bottoms, but whatever.
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Date: 2006-12-04 11:28 pm (UTC)