The Girl From Hunan
– The heartbreaking tale of a young girl sold into an arranged marriage with a 2 year old boy who she ..
The heartbreaking tale of a young girl sold into an arranged marriage with a 2 year old boy who she must raise as his nanny until he is old enough to marry her. She is expected to honour tradition and to toe the line so far as social proprieties are concerned, but the young girl rebels against the edicts of her elders until at 16, she falls in love with another man... Though set in turn-of-the-century China, The Girl from Hunan deliberately parallel the state of affairs in the China of the late 1980s.
03 Nov 1990
Mandarin
U Lan, Fei Xie
Congwen Shen (novel), Xian Zhang
Renhua Na, Xiaoguang Deng, Zongxiang Guan, Dazhong Jia
China, 1900. Xiaoxiao, a girl of about 12, comes to a mountain village for an arranged marriage with a two-year-old boy, Chunguan. Strict clan rules govern all behaviors. She becomes her husband's nanny (he calls her "sister"). Soon, Huagou, a local peasant, takes notice of Xiaoxiao, singing suggestive songs as they work and sending her compliments via the boy. At about the same time, Xiaoxiao sees "girl students" in the nearby town: young women her age who have friends who are boys, who read, who experience freedom. Xiaoxiao and Huagou begin a passionate affair, and, to her horror, she gets pregnant. Does death at the hands of the clan elders await her, or sale into slavery?
1 win & 1 nomination.