“The Postmodern Life of My Aunt”

The film “The Postmodern Life of My Aunt” (see the trailer below) by Ann Hui, a prominent Hong Kong film director, is a poignant film about values and life in the modern China. I can hardly recall another film that portrays modern China with as much poignancy and emotional undercurrents. No wonder the film is critically acclaimed, reaffirming Ann Hui’s directing talent.

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However, the film does not reveal these undercurrents until toward the middle of the film. So be patient to sit through the first part of the film.

The film features how a 60-year-old woman, who divorced her ordinary husband in the poor northern China during her younger days to pursue her dream in Shanghai, has come to the decision of going back to where her ex-husband is.

She is retired, can speak elegant English, loves painting, books and Peking opera, and still harbors hopes for romance despite her age.

Nevertheless, the reality of modern Shanghai/China has forced her to abandon her city life, or the cultivated and independent life she has been pursuing. She is disillusioned with a woman she knows on the street and who she helps; she is deceived by her niece who thinks up a kidnapping trick just to get her money. The last straw is the cheating of her lover, the new love she thinks she has just found who swindles her of all her savings by getting her to invest in a cemetery plot.

From an older era where honesty is a respected virtue and people trust each other, the woman finds herself in a world that she is no longer capable to deal with. She trusts the people she meets and the one she falls in love with, and yet, one by one, they betray her.

She is back to where her ordinary ex-husband is, in an industrial town with gloomy and dirty streets, and makes a living by sells shoes in an open market, alongside her ex-husband, in freezing cold. Her life is back to where she started. A life of vain inspirations.

The film resonates in those who know China. And the film is great not only because it reflects the modern China (such as the craze of buying cementary lots to make money), but also because it explores into the undercurrents of people’s emotions and aspirations living in today’s China.

My salute to Ann Hui, my favorite Hong Kong film director.