"The Story of Qui Ju"
                        A film review by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister
                       "The Women's Show"
                     WMNF-FM, Tampa, Florida
                          July 10, 1993

   I'm sure there are people out there who have been following the
films of Chinese "fifth wave" director Zhang Yi Mou and his star
Gong Li whose previous work together includes "Red Sorghum," "Jou
Dou," and "Raise the Red Lantern."   You'll be happy to know that
another film of theirs has now been released in this country, "The
Story of Qui Ju."  It is, in its way, just as amazing an
accomplishment as the previous work.  It seems, among other things,
that each of these films is a portrait of a woman of a particular
social class--artisan, upper-middle class, and now peasant--who is
willing to transgress the rules under which she is expected to
live.  That makes these interesting films for feminist viewers.

   "The Story of Qui Ju" is a very rich and evocative film and
there are many ways to think about it, but--perhaps because I'm a
philosopher--the thing that stood out most for me was the contrast
between what's called an ethic of care and an ethic of justice.
The film can be seen as a virtual treatise on that subject.  (It
might sound odd to bring such a Western philosophical construct to
bear on a film about Chinese peasants, but I recently read an
article by a Chinese philosopher from Beijing comparing the ethics
of care to the Confucian concept of jen, so it's not as off-the-
wall as it might seem at first.)  The ethic of care, more or less
started by Carol Gilligan's book _In a Different Voice_ in 1984,
and expanded upon by writers such as Nel Noddings in her books
_Caring_ and _Women and Evil_, articulates an ethical stance in
which caring, connectedness to other persons, the maintenance of
interpersonal relationships is all important.  The ethic of
justice, in contrast, emphasizes duties, rights, fairness,
obligations, and the rule of law.

   We meet Qui Ju, bundled up and very pregnant, in the first
sequence of the film as she and her sister-in-law, Meixi, pull a
rough wooden cart through the teeming streets of a Chinese town in
winter.  Their cargo is Qui Ju's husband who has been beaten and
kicked in the groin by the Chief of their small farming community
(for making the remark that the Chief could only father girl
children).  The doctor examines him, writes a diagnosis, and
predicts that he will recover with rest.  Qui Ju marches into the
Chief's house with the doctor's report and demands to know what
he's going to do about this.  Her family has been wronged and
someone needs to put things right.  The Chief suggests he stand
with his legs spread and Qui Ju's husband can kick him back.   This
is not what Qui Ju wants to hear, and thus begins her long odyssey
through the Chinese bureaucracy, trying, as it seems at first, to
get justice.  But when Police Officer Li from the town makes a
ruling that the Chief should pay them 200 Yuan and that both
parties should indulge in some self-criticism, Qui Ju is not
satisfied--especially when the Chief throws the 200 Yuan on the
ground and tells her to bow down to him by picking the money up.
She then takes her case on to the District level and beyond.

   It soon becomes clear that what Qui Ju wants is not justice--she
doesn't want the money or even the determination that the Chief did
something he shouldn't have done--for she gets these judgements at
each level.  What she really wants is for him to apologize; for him
to acknowledge, not that he broke a law but that he did something
that tore at the fabric of their human relationship.  She pursues
the issue to higher and higher levels hoping to find someone who
will "do what is right."   In spite of this, the sundered
relationship appears to be healing when the Chief helps her during
her difficult childbirth, but a surprise ending leaves us exiting
the theater pondering who has hurt whom.

  As usual Gong Li is terrific as this simple, illiterate but wily
peasant woman willing to go against the system to get what she
believes in.  All but three of the rest of the cast are non-actors,
residents of the area in which the film was shot on location.  That
and considerable footage of street scenes in the village, town, and
city that Qui Ju visits contribute to the sense that we get a
pretty good glimpse of what modern-day life in provincial China is
really like in this film.

  For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women
and Film.


Copyright 1993 by Linda Lopez McAlister.  No portion of this review
may be reproduced or reprinted without the permission of the
author.|