Iwa ni Hana

Movie posters of "The Beauty Remains" (美人依旧)

Just a very quick post – I think this obscurer than obscure movie is a fair example of the Chinese aesthetic concept of decadent beauty known as tui fei mei [頹廢美] (which I explained here in the past). Everything from the narration, the setting, the clothes and the atmosphere just gives you the feeling that “the end is nigh” and the characters (or at least some of them) are “putting on their best dress to greet the doom.”

Plot Summary: In the midst of a sea of change in China in 1949 – two long separated sisters, Ying (Vivian Wu) and Fei (Zhou Xun), are reunited in the event of the death of their wealthy father in order to execute his will. Ying (the elder sister) was borne by the legitimate wife and had always lived the life of opulence and leisure. Fei (the younger sister) was borne by a housemaid and had been expelled since childhood from the family’s mansion. Now a high school student, Fei was determined to not count her hopes on men – she wanted to do well at school and become a medical doctor. Fei’s simple life as a student was changed one day when she was summoned back to the family mansion after many years to live with Ying, and there Fei was introduced to Ying’s lover Mr Huang, who runs a casino. Mr Huang is a man with a “colorful past” involving many women. Not surprisingly, he began to seduce Fei, who yielded to him out of a vague feeling of revenge against Ying…

You can watch the trailer from YouTube below:

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You just know that the Chinese civilization has not been around for five thousand years for nothing by looking at all the words they have for describing different nuances of beauty – of beauty in the abstract, in nature, in men and women. Whatever you can think of, the Chinese is likely to have coined a word for it already. If you were ever to compile all those words together, you may actually end up with a nice dictionary of several hundred pages. What I have time to write about on this blog is only a tip of the iceberg.

There are two words in Chinese that describe the beauty of decay. They are easily confused with each other but I think several fine points of distinction would be as follows (feel free to disagree with me though):

墮落美 [duo luo mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is alluring in a sinister way, but is at the same time evocative of pain and longing in being a reminder of what it once was and what it no longer is – namely, the pristine state of innocence and purity it can no longer return to. In some (but not all) cases, the evil originates from a pure, noble and innocent motivation that turned bad in its means and execution for lack of choice, and from its existing state of badness it can only go from bad to worse and beyond salvation. The emphasis of this word is on the state where you have fallen from. Duo luo mei says to the viewer: ‘There was a time when I used to be not like this.’ It evokes pain and regret in the viewer, in that beneath those layers of decay, there may perhaps be a shred of that past innocence left.

頹廢美 [tui fei mei]
The decadent beauty of something fallen that is strangely attractive in its defiance and self-abandonment. It is frequently associated with moral decay but instead of angsting over its downfall, it rejoices in its fallen state. The emphasis of this word is the state of ruin as it is. The vision is focused on the end which is near – of impending doom, destruction, disease or death. It says  to the viewer: ‘This is just the way I am now and I have no regret about it. I long for the final release and I shall put on my best dress to greet that final release.’ It is brazen and is indifferent to what the viewer feels. Tui fei mei springs from the conviction that there is no tomorrow and tends to expresses itself in a rebellious attitude, by going out of the way to do something to excite jaded senses, to be lost in worldly pleasures and self-gratifications, and the pursuit of all that is unwholesome by society’s standards. Often, it is about slipping one notch lower, then another notch lower, then another notch lower, but keeping up pretenses of greatness with extravagant and sumptuous external appearances which are calculated to hide the interior emptiness. Tui fei mei is often found in artistic works towards the end of each dynastic cycle in Chinese history; an example of this would be the poetry of the late Tang.

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