Early stage Việt Linh fandom / Dấu ấn của quỷ (1992)
▣ ▣ For a long time, I believed that the only version available of Obsession 疯狂的代价 (1988), directed by Zhou Xiaowen 周晓文, was the neutered version cut for CCTV-6 several years ago, once the director’s reputation was secure. I found long after I fell in love with it a seemingly uncut version, about whose provenance I could discern very little. That story seemed as important as what that cut revealed. In the end, I determined it had likely been released on LaserDisc in Taiwan, then bootlegged in Hong Kong. Well. It was important to me, at least. ▣ We have to appreciate so many of these obscure films through streams and feeds, copied from bootleggers’ VCDs. This is important, I insist. Most people, whatever language they speak, must enjoy Rena's Marriage 热娜的婚 (1982) in a Uyghur dub (of the Chinese dub of a film shot originally in Uyghur), with advertisements up front for a Central Asian pirate video website. This is worth writing about, even if I am only suggesting the possibility here. ▣ To watch a Việt Linh’s Dấu ấn của quỷ (1992) means a stream of some version of the film’s only imprint, which was held in Japan. The Vietnamese cultural bureaucracy eventually had to ask for a version from the Japanese. We are in the same position. ▣ ▣
▣ ▣ I’ll mention Zhou Xiaowen again. When I discovered his films, it was like having my own auteur director, all to myself. He wasn’t merely a hack that had a few good ideas, but exactly that—an auteur—who had carefully crafted a body of work. Apart from a couple films from the middle of his career, he was mostly ignored, however. Nobody had ever written about his unique postsocialist cynicism. Nobody had written odes to Shi Lan 石兰 in No Regrets 青春无悔 (1991), playing a frequently braless former frontline nurse that rescues a veteran with a head injury. The stylized violence of Rush of Youth 青春冲动 (1991) was never appreciated by anybody but bootleg VCD consumers, it seemed. He was not arty enough for the art circuit; he had films banned but only for violence and graphic nudity, rather than more palatable political statements; and he came along right when cinema seemed not to matter to anybody. ▣ The same feels broadly true for Việt Linh—another unrecognized genius, who got her due too late. Her movies are recognizably out of step with the mainstream, but were released to a minuscule audience, then kept out of art circuits for reasons that were never political enough. ▣ ▣
▣ ▣ Like most Vietnamese directors that came of age in the 1970s, she went to the Soviet Union. Apart from the basics, they imparted only a love for heavy-handed symbolism. ▣ I discovered her work through the spare Gánh xiếc rong (1988), about itinerant performers arriving in the village of a highlands tribe. Based on a story by Phạm Thùy Nhân, it's a fable about wealth and hunger, town and country, and wickedness and goodness. The head of the traveling band hears that the villagers are poor but have gold tools; the villagers are confused by the abilities of the performers and conclude they must possess genuine power; and both sides are left dissatisfied. ▣ As soon as I saw it, I checked whether it was a co-production with a French company. I admit it. It was not that it seemed more competent or more Westernized in its appeal, but that it seemed simply too different from every other Vietnamese film I have seen from this period. (I will clarify: Vietnamese cinema in the 1980s was often brilliant and adventurous, but this was brilliant and adventurous in a way that I was unfamiliar with.) ▣ The depiction of tribal people led to the film being suppressed. This requires an explanation that I can’t provide. ▣ ▣
▣ ▣ Dấu ấn của quỷ is another film deeply peculiar by the measure of Vietnamese cinema of the period. Set in a world that might be historical or fantastical, it tells the story of a girl cast out of her village for carrying an ancient curse, manifested in the form of a crimson birthmark on her breast. She is taken in by an old leper. She falls in love with an escaped criminal. She gives birth to a child. This is all I can tell you, just so you might have the pleasure of seeing it without expecting the brutal ending. ▣ ▣