If you need convincing that Yan Bingyan is a deserved winner of
the Best Actress award at this year's Golden Rooster Awards - known
as China's Oscars - consider this: the 30-year-old actress spent 10
years in small TV roles before landing her first movie part in
The Teeth of Love.
Born in Beijing, Yan, a dance graduate, wallowed in obscurity
for a decade before being discovered.
"I understand how surprised people felt when my name was
announced that night. I can't believe it either. Before that night
hardly anyone knew who I was even though I have been playing
various roles since 1994," she says.
The Teeth of Love took its writer-director Zhuang Yuxin
10 years to complete. By the time it came to casting, Yan's natural
Beijing dialect and rebellious eyes caught the filmmaker's
attention. He knew straight away that she was right for the
film.
Opening and ending with scenes on a dentist's chair,
The Teeth of Love tells the story of a woman's
emotional pain from three failed love affairs. Split into three
parts, the film follows Qian Yehong firstly through her tomboy
teenage years in 1970s Beijing, during which she breaks the heart
of an adoring boyfriend.
The drama then shifts to her early 20s, with her working as a
doctor in a hospital. She has an affair with a married man. After
this ends badly, she returns to Beijing to work in an abattoir and
drifts into a marriage with a shy man called Wei Yingqiu, the
relative of an old classmate. Sadly, although the couple has a
child, Qian remains unfulfilled.
Each affair somehow manifests itself physically with the
troubled protagonist, such as back pain in her teenage years and an
abortion from her time with the married man.
Qian's weak back serves as a symbol of her misery and flare-ups
serve as a warning of imminent trouble.
"During her 10 years, Qian seems calm but is still restless
inside. She understands in the end that pain is the shortcut to
love," Yan says.
Spanning 1977-87, the film parallels Qian's struggles with
China's profound social transformations. Zhuang directs with a
naturalistic, unobtrusive style, utilizing a palette of muted
colors which heighten the gloomy atmosphere. The film's tension is
further accentuated by the sinister soundtrack.
"I found that pain and love are closely related to and rely on
each other," says Zhuang who believes that contemporary romance
lacks the pain necessary to engender deep emotions.
"In the end, people really do not respect the experience of
being in love," he says.
Unlike other films that use the reform era to explore the
effects of change upon the individual, Zhuang sidesteps social
commentary to deliver a touching, albeit sometimes cruel, tale.
Instead of tackling the changing times, he focuses on the complex
interactions between pain, love, memory and the human
experience.
As an admirer of Ingmar Bergman, Zhuang pays tribute to the late
Swedish director with his use of middle distance and close-up
shots.
According to He Jiawei, executive director of marketing at
Phoenix International Production company (which produced The
Teeth of Love), the film's 3 million yuan (US$400,000) budget
is small compared to other domestic films.
"But during its one-month shoot, the crew members cooperated
well and when the film was shown at cinemas it was applauded by
audiences," He says.
The response from critics has been warm too, with the film being
well received at the recent Asian Festival of 1st Films at
Singapore. The Teeth of Love was also shown at the 2007
Deauville Asian Film Festival in France and won the Best Feature
award at the 14th Beijing Student Film Festival. The film was also
invited to screen at the 31st Montreal World Film Festival, which
started on August 24, the day of its public release.
(China Daily December 26, 2007)
