As much a cultural touchstone as it is an exemplar of the Huangmei opera genre, this classic of classics sucks you into its overt melodramatism and a heartrending story of everlasting love as a woman dressed as a man in order to attend university meets another man.
Review #2,624
Dir. Li Han-Hsiang
1963 | Hong Kong | Drama, Musical, Romance | 121 min | 2.35:1 | Mandarin
PG (passed clean)
Cast: Betty Loh Ti, Ivy Ling Po, Yam Kit, Lee Kwan, Chen Yanyan
Plot: In this dreamy romance set in China during the fourth century, a young woman convinces her parents to allow her to dress as a boy and attend university.
Awards: Won 6 Golden Horses – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Music & Special Jury Award
Distributor: Celestial Pictures
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Mythical Romance; Companionship
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Oldham Theatre (Singapore Chinese Film Festival)
Spoilers: No
The Love Eterne wasn’t just a cultural touchstone in Chinese cinema history, it remains a classic of classics sixty years on. I was fortunate to have seen this on the big screen at the Singapore Chinese Film Festival as part of their ultra-mini Li Han-Hsiang retrospective.
Based on the Chinese legend ‘Butterfly Lovers’, The Love Eterne unfolds as a heartrending story between Liang Shangbo (Ivy Ling Po) and Zhu Yingtai (Betty Loh Ti), who meet along the journey to school, and as they say, the rest is history, or in this case, mythology.
Zhu is a young lady from a noble family who tricks her conservative parents into allowing her to attend school if she dressed as a man. Liang, a young man from a poor family, becomes her buddy, unaware that she’s a woman.
An exemplar of the Huangmei opera genre, where the characters mostly sing their lines (think of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), Li’s work is a musical romance very much in tune with its rhythms and melodies.
“Thanks for taking care of me for three years.”
From the beautiful opening titles to the fantastical albeit cheesy epilogue, The Love Eterne sucks you into its overt melodramatism, which it parades proudly as cultural and poetic.
Western audiences will surely find this to be an eye-opening, exotic experience. To me, it is more of an emotional journey, a film to cry your heart out. All that aside, Li’s film struck me most profoundly as a treatise on the fluidity of gender identity in Chinese classical storytelling.
With two actresses playing or pretending to be men, there are layers to appreciate and mull over in terms of discourse on gender and queerness, which I’m sure has been analysed to death over the decades.
Best of all, the everlasting love between Liang-Zhu is as pure as it gets—it knows no boundaries and is all-encompassing, and for a Chinese film made in that golden era, it is difficult to argue that the film isn’t progressive and hopeful despite its heteronormative and patriarchal constructs.
Look out for the rainbow at the end—so beautiful, so symbolic.
Grade: A
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 