Woman Demon Human

Huang Shuqin’s powerfully unorthodox drama Woman Demon Human is part biopic, part stage fantasy, part psychological mystery. It is based on the life of the female Beijing opera star Pei Yanling who was famous for portraying male roles on stage, especially the ghost-catching underworld god Zhong Kui. In the film version, Pei is called Qiu Yun, a young girl whose parents are Beijing opera performers. Qiu catches her mother making love with another actor, after which the mother abandons the family. Qiu then powerfully identifies with her father and consequently determines to inhabit a male stage persona. The film gives elliptical fragments of her career, from brutal training regimens, through dangerous flirtations, incipient fame and national renown.
Pei herself plays Zhong Kui, who manifests himself in Qiu Yun’s subjective point of view at moments of crisis in her life. The film’s most famous scenes stage imaginary encounters between Qiu Yun and her alter ego Zhong Kui, in a black undefined space splintered by mirror images, rent by the stresses of a fractured subjectivity. Called China’s ‘only genuinely feminist film’ by leading scholar Dai Jinhua, Huang’s film bravely disrupts biopic conventions from a female point of view, with stunningly inventive film technique, leaping in and out of Qiu Yun’s subjective world with brilliant confidence and technical bravura. (SK)