The challenge of the middle age is (though for me it's the very beginning of the middle age): every time I come back to China it is either to attend someone’s funeral, or to see someone for the last time. The charm of the middle age is: I’m being presented with the unfathomable depth and width of life, from its very beginning, through its ongoing process, till the end of it.
I thought China was close, but now I think it’s very far. Nevertheless, I am going to make more return trips as long as my father is still there.
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The hardest part about leaving for the first generation immigrants is not the decision to leave, nor the moment of leaving, but to leave everything behind and never being able to come back again, or being able to come back but only to leave again with more and more left behind and less and less hold upon to.
The heart-wrenchingly realistic and humane 2011 Iranian film “A Separation” is about the hard decision and process for the wife to leave and the husband to stay, with the complications of a teenage daughter, an Alzheimer father and a baby died in the belly. There's nothing right or wrong about leaving or staying. It is about the price of justice, the price of personal choice. For either side, the leaving and separation will just be the beginning of a story that will last and impact several generations. Peter Bradshaw’s review about Past Lives is so astute that I don’t have anything more to say about this wonderful feature debut by Celine Song. Read this: “This is a story of lost love and childhood crush, the painful and dangerous access to the past given by digital media; the roads not taken, the lives not led, the futile luxury of regret. And it’s a movie that speaks to the migrant experience and the way this creates lifelong alternative realities in the mind: the self that could have stayed behind in the old country, versus the one that went abroad for a new future.”
And how fitting the circumstances were under which I watched it. I started watching it on the plane back to Seattle from China two months ago by myself, only for about half an hour before the plane landed and me back to the role of a mother. I resumed it on the plane to China from Seattle three days ago again by myself but had to pause it due to my eyes aching from crying (not over the film but my mother). I finally finished it at 3am lying on the bed where mom was used to. I have always been all about going to new places, better places, bigger dreams, but I am just a Chinese girl from a tiny village in China, being instructed and cared by dozens of uncles and aunties and brothers and sisters about every step in mom’s funeral, after having left the village 25 years ago. I miss her. The last TV series I watched in 2023 is “Sex Education”, all the four seasons, and I was very impressed by the performance of the crew, especially Emma Mackey (who also starred in “Eiffel” with Romain Duris), Asa Butterfield, Ncuti Gatwa, Aimee Lou Wood, Connor Swindells, Mimi Keene, Gillian Anderson. I am also impressed by the very mature and exemplary treatment of its sex and communication themes.
The story boils down to how to deal with human relationships, particularly the intimate part, between boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, man and woman, husband and wife, parents and children, sisters and brothers, believers and non-believers, white and black, all in a very honest, realistic and relatable way. Growing up in China where everything seemed to be a taboo except for food, I envy with red eyes and an aching heart about the open and thorough communication permeating in the series. Actually I am as envious as to doubt whether a small-town British 16-year-old is really capable of those master-level communication and action about those petty and necessary challenges of life, like using or asking to use a condom every time during sex; being proud and determined, even though not without any bitterness or challenges, about their gender identity; apologizing or making up for their mistakes or misbehaviors in a timely manner; and going all the way to the essence of their intentions and desires (except between the two main characters Maeve and Otis where delays and misunderstandings were necessary props for story development). But whether a 16-year-old is capable of all those sensible words and deeds is not the point. The point is that I learnt a lot from those teenagers and their parents, and I started to imagine and hope that life could be so rewardingly eventful for my own children as they would be entering adulthood, or is this more or less what is happening with the teenagers now? (The 2021 French high school TV series “Voltair High” seems to be comparable to “Sex Education” but it is set in the 1960s France and has a different focus, even though they share some topics and the character setting is quite similar too. “Voltair High” has only released one season so far.) |
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May 2024
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