If filmmaker Alan Zhang had the intention of expunging the lines between reality and fiction and leaving us pondering even on the need for such lines, then she has succeeded in her quite brilliant debut This Woman. Both the film and its protagonist, as well as the director herself, leave you guessing about the veracity of what you have just seen – and whether or not it really matters.
‘This Woman’ is both the star of the documentary – if you can call it that – and the women she likes to compare herself with. The women that accept their circumstances, their inevitable motherhood, the fact that husbands always cheat and that falling in love is something for teenagers.
Beibei would like to be more like them, she candidly says to the camera, but unfortunately she just longs for love, or for the feeling of being loved and in love. She also, somewhere in the film, states that she loves her child, but won’t miss her when she’s away. That’s why it doesn’t bother her to leave her young daughter with her mother when she goes off to find work outside of Beijing, or to spend time with her young lover.
It take some time to get acquainted with the situation, as we are just thrown into Beibei’s life. We see her being with a young man, evidently in love, each enjoying the other’s company. She talks on the phone with her daughter, making a remark about her daddy, who apparently isn’t the person Beibei is with. Throughout the film we follow Beibei as she is trying to make sense of her life and her marriage, her role as a wife, mother and daughter, and her feelings and desires. It sometimes feels like watching an independent feature film, with non-professional actors, who are very good at improvising. Because the camera follows Beibei everywhere, even when she’s making love. And the scene where a handsome guy parks his motorbike, in a very aesthetic angle in front of a waiting camera, is just too cinematic to be true – or real.
But the conversations with her mother and the filmmaker (hidden behind the camera) surely are not staged, and neither are the tears when she speaks about giving up yet another relationship. And that little girl must be her daughter, because look at how Beibei takes care of her when the newly arrived Coronavirus strikes her down.
It is highly entertaining to follow Beibei on her journey to nowhere, visiting her grandmother in an old people’s home, talking to her father and presenting him with burning cigarettes at his grave within a stunningly beautiful cemetery. Watching her purchasing a house for her mother (‘now I have fulfilled my duty as a daughter’), trying to make some money working in her friend’s tea shop, arguing with her husband about their relationship, eating buns with her brother while tearing up having split from her young lover.
Beibei is completely lovable because of her candidness, her willingness to own up to her mistakes, her doubts and desires. You cannot but enjoy the interactions with her mother, arguing about her lovers and the fact that she runs off, leaving her child behind. Beibei justifies leaving her daughter with her mother by saying she was pressured into having the child, because a life without a grandchild would be meaningless. The mother first denies and then admits that it is her granddaughter who makes life without a man worthwhile.
This Woman, whether all of it or some of it is fake, is about real life and real women. About strong women growing up in China, trying to get by without having to depend on men. Living in a world based on false assumptions about what a woman should be, forsaking their own real needs in favour of traditions and unwritten laws.
If we have been watching Beibei’s real life filled with secrets about to be revealed to the world, this documentary should be the beginning of a series, following the unravelling of all the complicated situations. If it was all scripted and acted, the protagonist should be swept up by a film studio and showered in awards. In any case it makes for wonderful cinema and a very real desire for more.
China, 2023, 90 mins
Director: Alan Zhang
Executive producer: Xiaolu Wang
Producers: Yong Liao, Hihi Lee
Screenplay: Alan Zhang, Hihi Lee
Cinematography: Alan, Kun Liu
Editor: Alan Zhang, Zhongchen Zhang
Music: Qingzi
Starring: Hihi Lee
