Lou Ye and his film
As the representative figure of the sixth-generation directors of Mainland China, Lou Ye is known for his film narrative and ideology which challenge the authority and tradition. He is keen on shooting the lives of the vulnerable group of people who live on the edge of mainstream society, including manslaughter, prostitute, etc., most of whom are short-term hired, or jobless, and find difficulty in assimilating into the urban life.
When it comes to Lou Ye’s latest film Tui Na (Blind Message) in 2014, the vulnerable blind takes the center stage, making the contradiction between the disadvantaged and mainstream society the primary conflict instead of the contradiction between male and female.
The film Tui Na revolves around the blind massagers who work in a massage center in Nanjing (a city in China) and portrays their lives and desire for love. It has several storylines about different blind massagers. And the main storyline centers on the protagonist, Xiao Ma who lost his sight in an accident when he was a boy and works as a masseur in the center. He is first obssessed with the smell of another older masseur’s girlfriend, Xiao Kong (he calls her “sao zi”,which means sister-in-law in Chinese), and cannot help getting close to her. Later, he is brought to a hair salon that provides sexual service and falls in love with a girl called Mann there.
Generally speaking, Tui Na is a highly evaluated film, and has been nominated for the Golden Bear of Berlin International Film Festival. According to the film critic Patrick Wellinski, this masterpiece, unlike other films with similar themes around blind people, is not intended to ridicule the Chinese society and its social values; nor is it intended to depict the blind as repressed individuals who need to be sympathized. Instead, it has revealed truthfully the world of the blind, which has nothing different from the world of our own except for a few living habits. The unique film language helps to present the eternal truth that love is there to be discovered and “seen”, no matter you are blind or not. The blind people have the same desire and love, just like every single person in the society.
