After watching this perplexing and puzzling film, I would like to discuss two things about this film: the purpose of adopting “docudrama” style into the film and the mobility and identity of Chinese female figures associated with the transitional process of Chinese modernity.
I would like to briefly clarify the content of this film. This film includes two stories: a fictionalized story and a documentary story. The fictionalized story depicts a girl, Li Yueying, who is from a provincial town called Fushun in the Northeastern part of China, who wants to work in an entertainment trope in Shenyang but ends up as a hotel chambermaid. Her father ran away with other women and her mother took different men back home. Li does not get along well with her mother. However, her life totally changes after she meets a disabled guy at the hotel. This guy is an art dealer who smuggles paintings from Mainland China to Hong Kong (maybe). He asks Li to take a painting to Shenzhen. However, this disabled guy is killed by other dealers and Li never returns to her hometown. After six years, she gets married but secretly becomes a mistress of a rich Hong Kong middle-aged man. She also gets pregnant but this film does not indicate who is the baby’s father. The documentary story uses a handy video camera and documents a mainland female figure called Jenny Tse, who is in the process of getting a divorce from her Hong Kong husband and her daily life in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. She tries to find a job at a Hong Kong restaurant but is turned away because she cannot write traditional Chinese characters. She returns to Shenzhen and wanders on the street, shopping and dancing with other people on the street. She regrets to go to Hong Kong and declares she would rather stay in a local factory as a Dagongmei (Factory girls).
The genre of this film fits into the definition of “docudrama” that was addressed by Steven Lipkin. It features “as a hybrid form, wedding ‘documentary’ material with ‘drama’(Lipkin, 1). This creative narrative style is very unique among contemporary Chinese films, which break the traditional way of film production. However, the rapid shiftiness of the narrative form featured with a double narrative thread destroys the integrity of the film, fragmentizes the structure of the two stories, and disrupts the narrative rhythm of the film, which disturbs the audiences’ aesthetic experience to some extent. Due to the mixture of these two parts, the audiences sometimes cannot tell which part is fictionalized, or which part is a documentary. Nevertheless, rather than say the fiction part ostensibly departs from the documentary is not necessarily true, they essentially complement each other. Li’s life experience is the past of Jenny’s, her present suffering probably will be the future of Li, that is to say, Jenny is the prefigure of Li, and Li is the exact copy of Jenny. The film poster of this film also reaffirms this concept. This poster is divided into two parts. The top part portrays Li’s image in the background of the industrialized town that features several factory chimneys. The bottom part looks like the inverted image of Li but depicts Jenny’s image in the background of the commercialized metropolis that features hundreds of tall buildings near Victoria Bay in Hong Kong.
According to an interview with Tang, she did not intend to put a documentary part into this film. When almost 60% of the fictionalized part was finished, she met a mainland woman who was in the process of getting divorce with her Hong Kong husband. Tang thought it would make good documentary material and could be used in the film. However, when Tang decided to shot a film about that woman, she got married again and refused to take part in the filming. Then Tang met another woman who was also trying to get divorced from her husband who was a Hong Kong chef. In my opinion, Tang purposely puts these two parts together in order to reveal the reality and shorten the distance between artistic production and history. The documentary part not only can be a direct resource of the fictionalized part, but also can verify the authenticity of the migrants’ situation that is put on the screen. Moreover, the organic organized structure of this film leads audiences to have an overall view of a migrant’s preexistence and experiences later in life. If we only narrated Li’s story in a very matter-of-fact way, a completely fictionalized account of her life experiences, the dramatic effect of this film would be greatly reduced. Indulging in reality and fiction, we find ourselves involuntarily feeling pity on the figures, no matter if it is the protagonist or the real figure. All of the emotions are simulated by the director even if we cannot figure out how to tell the differences between fiction and reality. But who is responsible for their fate? The disabled guy? The Hong Kong husband? Or anyone else?
As mentioned above, this film clearly shows Tang’s sympathy toward these female migrants. In my opinion, Tang neither wants to contrast or complement these two figures. She attempts to deliver more on the screen. As we all know, all the film productions can be considered an artistic representation of reality. As Lipkin says, “docudrama is using narrative structure to advocate its view of its subject.” (Lipkin, 4) But what is the subject of this film? In my opinion, this film shows the female migrant’s marginal social identities reshaped by the modernization and globalization process in China. Along with the implementation of the opening and reform policy, China has experience dramatic changes in different aspects. As a result, Chinese, especially rural people are amazed by the rapid transformation of social systems and global capital flows. Tang declares she is not interested in the “half and half” experimental creative practice; instead, she is concerned with “the tension that is formed by the interconnection of these two stories. This film is not merely an individual’s story, or even a story about two people, but the construction of a very special world.” What kind of world in Tang’s eyes? It is a world full of lust, desire and commercialized lures. Although Li goes to Shenzhen not based on her own decision (she does learn English and is eager to see the outside world), she does indeed settle down in this city and does not want to come back. But Jenny regrets her move to Hong Kong and says she would rather work as a Dagongmei in a factory. Compared to her life in Hong Kong, the life of a Dagongmei is much simpler. This film shows the tension between an undeveloped provincial town and modern metropolitan cities and the tension between the lure of the western commercialization and traditional provincial life in a town in Mainland China. Tang sharply points out the modernization process in China has a great impact on reshaping people’s identity and life. Differing from the female protagonist Qin Yan in Durian Durian who goes to Hong Kong on a tourist visa but finally goes back to her hometown, the female roles in Perfect Life never return. Their identity is marked as a migrant who seeks to find a better life in a “New Society”. However, their life turns out to be a failure to some extent. Tang does not want to condemn the modernization process in China but inexplicitly criticizes the dramatic and rapid change in mainland China. Moreover, the inferior female figure is a signifier of cultural identity and China itself, who is eager to join the whole modernization process and incorporate itself into western discourse, ignoring its own identity. The female figure metaphorically represents the unequal relationship between China and the West.
I have two questions regarding this film. First, one thing is very obvious in this film: the male figures are absent, weaken, or disabled. Li always mentions her father but her father never appears on the screen, as well as her husband in Shenzhen. From Li’s words, we know her father leaves town with another woman and nobody can find him. Li’s younger brother studies in a vocational school and sells lascivious magazines to his classmates. The film ends with a shoot that Li takes a photo with her wedding photo on the couch. Why does Tang portray the male figures in the film in a negative light? Second, the title of this film is very problematic. What is the meaning of “perfect life”? Why does Tang Xiaobai want to use this as the title of the film? It is obvious Jenny’s attempt of searching for a perfect life has failed, and Li’s future is also unpredictable. Tang shows us the female figures’ dreams were shattered in the harsh reality. Does this mean seeking a perfect life will end in failure?
