Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas

Michelle E. Bloom

Michelle E. Bloom

Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas

Absent Fathers, Banned Books, and Red Balloons

In: Critical Interventions

Edited by: Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu

University of Hawaii Press | 2016

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824857455

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About this book

Transnational cinemas are eclipsing national cinemas in the contemporary world, and Sino-French films exemplify this phenomenon through the cinematic coupling of the Sinophone and the Francophone, linking France not just with the Chinese mainland but also with the rest of the Chinese-speaking world. Sinophone directors most often reach out to French cinema by referencing and adapting it. They set their films in Paris and metropolitan France, cast French actors, and sometimes use French dialogue, even when the directors themselves don't understand it. They tend to view France as mysterious, sexy, and sophisticated, just as the French see China and Taiwan as exotic.

As Michelle E. Bloom makes clear, many films move past a simplistic opposition between East and West and beyond Orientalist and Occidentalist cross-cultural interplay. Bloom focuses on films that have appeared since 2000 such as Tsai Ming-liang's What Time Is It There? , Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, and Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. She views the work of these well-known directors through a Sino-French optic, applying the tropes of métissage (or biraciality), intertextuality, adaptation and remake, translation, and imitation to shed new light on their work. She also calls attention to important, lesser studied films: Taiwanese director Cheng Yu-chieh's Yang Yang, which depicts the up-and-coming Taiwanese star Sandrine Pinna as a mixed race beauty; and Emily Tang Xiaobai's debut film Conjugation, which contrasts Paris and post-Tiananmen Square Beijing, the one an incarnation of liberty, the other a place of entrapment. Bloom's insightful analysis also probes what such films reveal about their Taiwanese and Chinese creators.

Scholars have long studied Sino-French literature, but this inaugural full-length work on Sino-French cinema maps uncharted territory, offering a paradigm for understanding other cross-cultural interminglings and tools to study transnational cinema and world cinema. The Sino-French, rich and multifaceted, linguistically, culturally, and ethnically, constitutes an important part of film studies, Francophone studies, Sinophone studies and myriad other fields. This is a must-read for students, scholars, and lovers of film.

Reviews

The book doesn’t stop at analysis of narratives: with a fine web of intertextual and cinematic references, Bloom shows how the hybrid character of these films comes from the complex interplay of intextual references, citations, homages, liberation from norms and reflections on the heritage of artistic fathers (the New Wave first and foremost).

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	ix
Introduction to Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
PART ONE. Franco-Taiwanese Cinema Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	29
1. The Sino-French as Métissage Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	29
2. Intertextuality as Métissage in Tsai Ming-liang’s Sino-French Films Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	72
3. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon as a Sino-French Makeover Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	109
PART TWO. Franco-Chinese Cinema
4. Translations of Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	137
5. Imitating Frenchness in Emily Tang Xiaobai’s Conjugation and Jia Zhangke’s The World Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	160
Conclusions Mixing It Up Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	188
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	203
Filmography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	237
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	241
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	259
About the Author Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	273

Contemporary Sino-French Cinemas

Absent Fathers, Banned Books, and Red Balloons

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