When
it comes to marriage, it isn’t the love or the memories that really matter. It’s
the paperwork. Alas, Qui Huiying’s father was not particularly diligent at
documenting his two marriages, but those were chaotic times in the Mainland
provinces. As a result, Qui and her father’s first wife find themselves in a
standoff throughout Sylvia Chang’s Love
Education (fortunately also starring Chang herself), which screens during
the 2018 Miami Film Festival.
After
the death of her mother, Qui decides her parents should be buried together,
even though that would mean exhuming him from the grave “Nanna” tends every
day. In fact, the soon-to-retire teacher is convinced this was her mother’s
dying request, even though her husband Yin Xiaoping and daughter Weiwei totally
missed it. Determining legal standing in this case will be a tricky business. Grandpa
and Nanna were joined in an arranged marriage, but he left their famine-wracked
village a few months later hoping to find opportunity in the big city. There he
met Qui’s mother, whom he married according to more modern and legal
conventions. However, neither has the right kind of official court marriage
license to prove their rightful custodianship of his grave.
Meanwhile,
Weiwei was falling for Da, a brooding hipster bar singer, at least until his ex
and her young son showed up on his doorstep. Their relationship might sound
like it will parallel that of Qui’s parents, but Chang is too sophisticated a
filmmaker for such simplistic one-to-one gimmicks. Indeed, it soon becomes
clear their halting romance is very much their own.
Granted,
Love Education is messy in both smart
ways that are true to life and in less fortunate reflections of a somewhat
untidy screenplay. However, it is enormously refreshing to see an emotionally
mature relationship-driven film that features intelligently drawn, fully
dimensional female and male characters. Clearly, Chang has a special knack for
this kind of drama, having also helmed the exquisitely delicate Murmur of the Hearts.
Of
course, she is also one of our greatest living actresses. Critics love to laud
Dame Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon as more mature actresses who are still glamorous,
but that should apply one hundred-fold to Chang (just check out her recent work
in Office and Mountains May Depart). This time around, she still somehow manages
to sneak up on us, charging ahead as the dutiful-daughter-tiger-mother in the
first two acts—and then suddenly lowering the boom on us in key scenes down the
stretch.
Likewise,
the formerly banned filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhaung gives a lowkey performance as
Yin, until he suddenly just pulls the rug out from under us. Lang Yueting
nicely portrays Weiwei’s process of maturing and coming into herself, while
Geng Le adds some intriguing flair as the actor-parent of one of Qui’s problem
students.
Love Education is an intimate
film that makes you fee like you are practically a member of Qui’s family. Yet,
buried within, there is some thinly veiled critiques of China’s longstanding
record of polygamous practices in rural areas, as well as the chaotic mid-20th
Century ideological movements that left so many government records offices in a
state of utter shambles. First and foremost, there is really terrific work from
Sylvia Chang on both sides of the camera. Highly recommended for readers authors
like Gail Tsukiyama and Lisa See, as well as Chang’s many fans, Love Education screens tomorrow (3/18),
as part of this year’s Miami Film Festival.
