films about Asian women

‘The Assassin’ We Want To See

Because ‘The Assassin’ packs nearly every kind of arty, intersectional-feminist fan’s fantasy into one movie. It centers around a woman of color (it takes place in China in the middle ages and its director is Taiwanese, so most of the actors are Taiwanese too) whose main scenes are with other women of color (this film has relatively little dialogue but passes the Bechdel test with no problem).

I was out of town for a long weekend and then catching up on what I had missed when I found out Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s The Assassin was having its last showing (a late matinee, not even an evening show) in my art-house-friendly town. I wasn’t even aware the film had begun its run. I dropped everything to see it, and if this movie is playing nearby, so should you.

Because The Assassin packs nearly every kind of arty, intersectional-feminist fan’s fantasy into one movie. It centers around a woman of color (it takes place in China in the middle ages and its director is Taiwanese, so most of the actors are Taiwanese too) whose main scenes are with other women of color (this film has relatively little dialogue but passes the Bechdel test with no problem). The main character, Nie Yinniang (Qi Shu) is the assassin of the title, an action heroine (or maybe an anti-heroine: for much of the film we don’t know) with beautifully choreographed martial arts scenes: this film unlike some other films of the Wuxia genre doesn’t feature the ridiculous airborne hijinks that defy suspension of disbelief.

The Assassin, as a historical costume drama also shows off its high-born characters in sumptuous period robes, their homes decorated with curtains and tapestries as fine, if not finer than their clothes: we even see some of the palace intrigue through these gauzy, wafting borders, as if we, like the main character are spying through them. And this film is stunningly shot (by cinematographer Ping Bin Lee): one of the only subtitled films in which I missed at least a little of the dialogue because I was too busy looking at what was onscreen. The Assassin even has a little, old-fashioned black magic in its plot, which made me love it even more.

What the film doesn’t do is pander to a Western audience: the story is apparently well known in China in many different incarnations, but not in the US. Still, I much prefer a film that makes me sometimes wonder what’s going on to one like The Walk with its over-explanation and bad performances obfuscating its emotionally-fraught (my palms and even the soles of my feet were sweaty) 3D action scenes. The Assassin isn’t in 3D, but the moves are so fast, smooth and quiet they’re like dance captured on film (although these scenes probably use some form of camera trickery I couldn’t spot it). The camera astonishes elsewhere too. At one point we are looking, in a long take, at a curtained alcove of the Governor’s palace and we suddenly see Yinniang standing there, listening in the shadows, and we’re not sure if she just appeared or if we didn’t notice her before.

We watch much of this film as a dance performance. Yinniang is often silent: more than one critic has compared her to the sometimes ambiguous main characters in Westerns. We know that she is trained as a killer and see her kill at the start of the film, but we also see that she won’t murder a target in front of his young son. Her teacher, a nun says, “The way of the sword is without compassion,” but we don’t know, for the majority of The Assassin, if that way will turn out to be Yinniang’s and are often looking at her face–and her actions–for clues.

In other words, we’re looking at a taciturn, complex main character not uncommon in movies about men (especially Westerns) but pretty much unheard of in films about women (not just her teacher but also one of Yinniang’s fighting opponents is a woman). At the behest of her teacher, Yinniang returns to her hometown to kill her cousin, Tian Ji’an (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Chen Chang), the independent Governor of her home province, but her mother, not knowing the reason for her return puts her into the fancy, movement-constricting robes other women wear. We see Yinniang trying on the outfit and then wearing her signature black coat and wrapped boots for the rest of the film. And unlike other long-haired women action-adventure heroines she actually has her hair tied in such a way that it won’t get in the way of her fighting.

We find out later that Yinniang was at one time betrothed to her cousin and the two were given matching pieces of carved jade to formalize this arrangement. When she makes her first attempt on the Tian Ji’an’s life she leaves behind her piece. “She wanted me to recognize her before taking my life. She wanted me to know why,” he says.

But the film doesn’t waste much time portraying Yinniang as heartbroken, though her quiet, watchful demeanor is in keeping with the trauma she has endured, in both the separation from her family at a young age and her conscription into killing. At the same time, she also has a romantic interest (Satoshi Tsumabuki) who, from the expression we see on his face, seems to realize no woman is as hot as the one who pushes a bad guy in front of you at the right moment to stop an arrow that was headed for your chest.

Hsiao-Hsien Hou won “Best Director” at Cannes for this film, so I don’t understand the lack of fanfare for The Assassin now. In contrast to several acclaimed films I’ve seen lately, I was never bored during The Assassin and wished the film lasted longer. At the matinee I spotted three, youngish Asian women (three more than I would expect at that showtime, in that neighborhood) in the audience as the lights came up, one of whom was beaming at what she had just seen. If only film distributors and male critics would realize a lot of women like (and unlike!) her would love to see this terrific-looking, well-acted, martial-arts film about a complicated, Asian woman who is nobody’s victim or martyr.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSoXoOAY1zU” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

The Kims Next Door: Korean Identity on ‘Gilmore Girls’

While Rory struggled with the myriad of concerns afforded to a main character: her love life, her future, her friendships and family, Lane’s biggest conflict was always her overbearing, uber-religious mother and to a lesser degree, her own Korean heritage. Being Korean is never posed as a positive thing for Lane, it is only a marker of difference.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.

When Gilmore Girls was on it never occurred to me how strange it was that doe-eyed, bookworm Rory was on odd choice for a main character. Rory always carried a book around in her purse and considered an ideal evening to be watching a movie with her mother and eating her weight in junk food; on any other show she’d be a nerd, but her best friend, Lane Kim was undeniably cool. Lane was in a rock band, Lane was a cheerleader, she had an encyclopedia knowledge of music and later, she lived in a virtual frat-house with her bandmates. But she wasn’t Rory, the town’s baby, the golden girl, Snow White. Lane appeared to be just as smart and well-read as Rory, but no one ever suggested Chilton or Yale could be options for her. Rory and her big blue eyes went off to conquer the world and Lane stayed back in Stars Hollow, a few blocks from where she’d grown up, still in her mother’s sphere of influence.

For most of the show’s run, Rory or her mother Lorelai, would have their A-plot adventures, navigating the strange world of wealth and classism their old money background and Rory’s acceptance to Chilton usher them into, while plots for supporting characters like Lane, Rory’s closest friend (besides her mother) since the first day of preschool, popped up occasionally. While Rory struggled with the myriad of concerns afforded to a main character, her love life, her future, her friendships and family, Lane’s biggest conflict was always her overbearing, uber-religious mother and to a lesser degree, her own Korean heritage.

Being Korean is never posed as a positive thing for Lane (played by Japanese American actress Keiko Agena), it is only a marker of difference. Besides Michel, the flamboyant Celine Dion-loving inn concierge, who is Black, there are no other memorable minority characters in the series besides Lane and her mother. Though she is given her share of witty lines and pop culture references, Lane is the token minority best friend who has quirky hobbies, such as obsessively collecting CDs and hiding music and books her mother wouldn’t approve of under her floorboards. Once, when she believes she is being shipped off to Korea with a giant suitcase and a one-way ticket, the unseen idea of Korea, a far away land full of unknown relatives and unfamiliar culture so different from her American identity, is posed as a punishment and a threat.

In the first few seasons, her major hurdle is her mother’s insistence that she only date nice Korean boys, preferably future doctors. In one episode, she finds herself interested in a Korean boy who attends Chilton with Rory and her attraction to him becomes a minor identity crisis, that she handled by sneaking around and acting as if he was a boy her mother would not approve of. The relationship quickly ended before it had really begun because of Lane’s fixation on her mother’s approval, and her often pointless rebellion against her. In a later plot line, Lane discovered another young Korean boy, who she described to Rory as “the male me”, as he was forced to keep his relationship with a white girl secret from his mother. At the time, Lane was dating a white boy ( Adam Brody , who left Gilmore Girls to make his name in The OC ), they made a deal to pretend they were dating each other.

If Lane is used as a foil to Rory, Lane’s mother, who is only ever referred to as Mrs. Kim (Emily Kuroda), is contrasted with Lorelai. Lorelai is young and fun, while Mrs. Kim is austere and unyielding; if the show’s thesis is that Lorelai’s parenting style, acting as best friends instead of mother and daughter, is successful and enviable, we can only infer we are meant to see Mrs. Kim’s authoritarian parenting as failing her child. Though her character is given several humanizing moments throughout the series’s run, she retains cartoonish characteristics (notably in seven seasons, she is never given a first name), though this is common among the denizens of Stars Hollow. She talks fast and brusque, “barking” out orders in her heavy accent, scaring and dominating other adults, and single handedly controls Lane’s life, like a less ambitious “Tiger Mom.” Her idea of the life Lane can have is small: attend a religious college, marry a Korean doctor and have children. It’s a life not unlike her own.

Though early seasons hint that there is a Mr. Kim living with Lane and her mother, just offscreen, gradually these hints peter out and Mrs. Kim is left in a strange netherland: She mistrusts unmarried women and considers herself to be married, yet she doesn’t seem to be divorced or widowed. Like Lorelai, she is, or at least acts as, a single mother and along with her dominance, this masculinizes her.

Meanwhile Lane is closer to the stereotype of Asian women as submissive. Though she attempts to be rebellious and independent, Lane’s worldview has been shaped by the mother whose shadow she lives in. As Gilmore Girls began with the tension of whether or not Rory would repeat her mother’s mistakes, sex was always loaded territory in the show. Though Rory is able to grow into an outgoing, sex positive woman, thanks to Lorelai’s example, Lane is never able to enjoy sex. She believes her mother has somehow gotten into her head, convincing her subconscious that she had to wait until marriage to have sex, even though her conscious mind has not made this choice. On her wedding day, she learns that Mrs. Kim believes she is lucky because she only “had” to have sex once in her life, which produced Lane. Likewise, Lane becomes pregnant from her first, grossly unsatisfying sexual encounter.

As a friend, Lane is also subservient to Rory, though part of this is the nature of her role as a supporting character. Rarely does she get mad at Rory for going off to a fancy new school, leaving her at Stars Hollow High, frequently referred to as a nowhere school which prepares students only for trades and sales. Lane is forced to live the life Rory would have lived if not for her rich grandparents’ patronage.

Part of Rory’s new life are her countless new friends, classmates roommates and colleagues (mostly notably frenemy cum BFF Paris Geller), who often seem closer to her than Lane. Even if Lane is Rory’s closest friend, Lorelai is always her best friend, the person she cares about and understands better than anyone else. In contrast, Lane only has her music and she accepts this.

Besides being the only non-white character whose background we are given in detail, Mrs. Kim is also the only religious character, thus her Asian-ness is inexplicably tied to her religiousness, as a Seventh Day Adventist. Her church appears to be mainly Korean and Korean food and instruments are major parts of their gatherings. Though religion is a major source of conflict between Lane and Mrs. Kim, it also facilitates an understanding when Mrs. Kim’s mother comes to attend Lane’s wedding. The grandmother is a strict Buddhist who is unaware that her daughter is a Christian, forcing her to hide her bibles and crosses under the same floorboards where Lane hid her music. Lane is finally able to understand her mother though this rebellion, her Christianity becomes as subversive as Lane’s rock and roll.

Though Lane’s Korean identity only ever appears to be a source of discomfort, by the series’ end she seems to have made an offscreen peace with her heritage, as she names one of her twins Kwan.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Saving Face’: About Chinese American Women, Not Based on a Book By Amy Tan

Like ‘Chutney Popcorn,’ ‘Saving Face’ is one of the few films focused on queer people of color and their families. Having those two elements together might seem like a modest achievement, but ‘Pariah’ is one of the only recent films that also includes both. Mainstream movie makers apparently think queer people of color don’t have families, but instead are deposited as eggs in a sandy, warm spot by a pond until they hatch and make their way, independently, into the world.

Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on Asian Womanhood in Pop Culture.

During writer-director Alice Wu’s 2004 romantic comedy Saving Face one of the main women characters goes into a video store and looks at the “Chinese” shelf of DVDs: it’s The Joy Luck Club plus a whole lot of porn. In spite of East Asians making up an increasing part of the international film market (and American films increasing reliance on the rest of the world to make money at the box office), we still have hardly any mainstream films starring actresses of East Asian ancestry (or of any other Asian ancestry). Rinko Kinkuchi is a Japanese actress who has had success in Babel, Pacific Rim and most recently Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter and Lucy Liu has an established career, but we see relatively few Asian women stars in American films–and never more than one at a time.

Saving Face, which focuses on three Chinese American women (all of whom are also played by Chinese American actresses), came during what was, especially compared to more recent releases, a wave of films centered on people of color and their immigrant families (Bend It Like Beckham, The Namesake) along with some rom-com fluff which featured queer protagonists (Imagine Me and You and a litany of forgettable movies on the LGBT film festival circuit). Like Chutney Popcorn, Saving Face is one of the few films focused on queer people of color and their families. Having those two elements together might seem like a modest achievement, but Pariah is one of the only recent films that also includes both. Mainstream movie makers apparently think queer people of color don’t have families, but instead are deposited as eggs in a sandy, warm spot by a pond until they hatch and make their way, independently, into the world.

The characters of Saving Face don’t so much subvert stereotypes as present another side to them. Wil (short for Wilhelmina, played by Michelle Krusiec) is a high-achieving second-generation New York City surgical resident–who is also queer. Wil’s mother, Hwei-Lan Gao–mostly referred to as “Ma” (played by Joan Chen)–is the scolding, guilt-inducing first-generation immigrant, but also stunningly beautiful, and, at 48, pregnant and single. Wil’s girlfriend Vivian (Lynn Chen) has a career as a ballerina which, because it’s part of the classical arts, her doctor father approves of–but what she really loves is modern dance.

Even though Wil is the main character, she’s the least interesting of the three, though, refreshingly, she is one of the few women protagonists in film who wears pants and men’s cut shirts and jerseys throughout, with no “makeover” scene. We all know women, of every sexual orientation, who wear those clothes every day, but actresses in movies and TV seem to sport skirts and cleavage for every occasion. Wil also wears her long hair in a ponytail, not an unusual look for a busy medical resident, but one not usually seen on women main characters in movies even those doing jobs or activities (like fighting bad guys) that make loose, long hair impractical.

When Wil’s grandparents find out her long-widowed mother is pregnant they throw her out of their house in Flushing, Queens. The Chinese American community there also ostracize her, so, in a sitcom-like scenario she comes to live with Wil. As in most American films (Obvious Child is one of the few exceptions), even though the pregnancy is unplanned and disrupts her living situation and social standing, no one ever offers abortion as a solution, though it’s a procedure one out of three American women will have during her reproductive lifetime.

“Ma” is sad and shaken, but not enough to keep her from redecorating the apartment with a lot of red as well as blaring Chinese devotional music while she meditates. Women characters who are almost 50 hardly ever get this much complexity and screen time but giving it to a working-class (her job is at a hair salon), first-generation immigrant who is also sexy and vulnerable is unheard of. Joan Chen is so good in the role, even the queer supremacist in me wishes the film were more about her than her comparatively dull daughter.

Gorgeous, flirty Vivian is an Asian American woman we don’t often see in films, a queer, confident femme. She tells Wil she’d like to meet her mother, something that Wil at first says, will never happen. But Vivian convinces her, “Just tell her I’m a friend. A nice Chinese girl….I’ll fake it.”

We see Wu teasing Chinese American stereotypes throughout the film. When her mother is about to go an a date, trying to find a husband before the baby is born, Wil tells her to change out of the matronly black dress she’s wearing. Wil holds up another of her mother’s dresses, but her mother dismisses it, saying “Chinese people cannot wear yellow.” When Wil gives her mother a questioning look she says (in English), “On sale.” We also see anti-Black sentiment isn’t confined to white people with some of the remarks Wil’s mother makes about Wil’s Black neighbor Jay (Ato Essandoh)–and with this character we also see that an Asian-American screenwriter can use Black characters as tokens the same way white screenwriters do.

In a lot of ways the film feels like it takes place earlier than just a little over a decade ago and not just because of its landline telephones. Eleven years of queer rights legislation and legal marriage in parts of the US (now a reality in a majority of states) make queer people a lot less likely to be closeted to their own immediate families (even conservative, immigrant ones), so Wil’s behavior around her mother seems as alien to us as the time before (most) everyone had a smartphone. Later we find out that Wil isn’t closeted, that her mother knows, but is in denial. In contrast, Vivian’s mother, from the same first-generation immigrant community (but also somewhat ostracized because she’s divorced) knows that her daughter is dating Wil and doesn’t have a problem with it. She casually leaves a message on the answering machine–which the couple hear while they have sex, “Did Wil show up? Thought you may wanna talk after she leaves. Oh, maybe she’s still there? OK. Bye.”

Of course in the template for this kind of film even the most entrenched homophobia never lasts long. Nothing serious ever does: when a minor character dies, the mourning is so short-lived I expected someone to tell us the death had been a misunderstanding. The ending of Saving Face reminded me of Big Eden from 2000 where the denizens of a small town in the Montana all gather around an interracial male couple slow-dancing at the end and no one looks at them with anything less than benevolence–when at least some of these folks would probably be Ted Cruz supporters. But instant queer acceptance in small, sheltered communities might not be any more unlikely than a world where American movie executives continue to ignore the people who make up more and more of their audience.

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender