Independent Films, Film Profiles

The Wooden Man's Bride

The Wooden Man's Bride (Chinese: 五魁; pinyin: Wǔ kuí) is a 1994 Chinese film directed by the fifth generation filmmaker Huang Jianxin. The film is Huang's fifth feature and the first of his films to be released in the United States. The film was also the first film shot in Mainland China to be entirely financed by Taiwanese producers.[2] The film stars both Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese actors, and was based on the novel by Jia Pingao.The Wooden Man's Bride was something of a departure for the director, Huang Jianxin, whose earlier works were modern day satires on bureaucracy as in the black comedy, The Black Cannon Incident, and the science-fiction dystopia in Dislocation.Set in the 1920s during China's Warlord Era, The Wooden Man's Bride is a romance film between two unlikely people from different classes. A young woman, known only as "Young Mistress" (Wang Lan), is on her way to meet her future husband for the first time when her procession is attacked by sword-wielding bandits in the desert. A servant, Kui (Chang Shih) recklessly takes off after the bandits who have kidnapped the young mistress and taken her back to their lair. When he arrives, Kui impresses the chief of the bandits (Kao Mingjun), who allows Kui to take the Young Mistress back.Meanwhile, word has reached the Young Mistress's fiance of her capture. Preparing to engage in a thrilling rescue, the hapless young man accidentally sets off an explosion, killing him. When Young Mistress finally arrives, she faces her fiance's imperious mother (Wang Yumei), who forces the young woman to undergo arcane tests of purity to determine whether she is worthy to marry the (now dead) bridegroom. When Young Mistress passes these tests, she is forced to marry the titular "wooden man," a wood-carved statue of her late fiance.Forced into a life she does not want, Young Mistress tries and fails to escape from her new home. She finds solace in her growing friendship with her one-time hero, Kui, a friendship that soon blossoms into an illicit love affair. When the affair is discovered, Kui is banished from the mill, and Madame Liu has the Young Mistress's legs broken to prevent escape. Kui, however, is determined to rescue his love once more.