Don't cry in the sedan, it'll bring you bad luck.

Red Sorghum
Zhang Yimou 1987 China
Starring: Gong Li, Jiang Wen, Ji Chunhua, Teng Rujun

The Chinese director Zhang Yimou is one of those whose work has been seen by many but generally without their acknowledgement or realisation of who he is. His 2002 and 2004 wuxia films (literally 'martial hero' but used to describe a media-spanning genre concerning martial arts) Hero and House Of Flying Daggers for example were both Oscar-nominated and have been shown on primetime Channel 4 but very few of the viewers who saw (and presumably enjoyed them) would be able to name Yimou if asked. Red Sorghum, based on a novel by Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, was his debut and the first of his veiled criticisms of Chinese society and far from the subtlety you may expect it's actually a savage and sumptuous satire based around China's treatment of women with the main character played by the exceptional Gong Li. Her name is never revealed but she insists on Little Nine, an androgynous given nickname that both strips her of her gender and, in its infantilising nature, her sexuality, so entirely institutionalised in nature that despite her rebellion she doesn't seem to recognise its implications. Almost immediately we're shown a headshot as she's forced both into marriage and more literally into a sedan and covered with a veil, one that denies the viewer the right to look at her just as her thoughts and opinions are denied an outlet and just as she is virtually ignored as the men that carry her insult her like she isn't there. When they finally do greet her it's by telling her that her intended is a leprous winemaker with a body full of poison ("If he touches you, you'll rot"), to moan that she won't chat with them and to give her a horrific jolting ride because it's a 'custom'. In a genuinely shocking moment Yimou even appears to be joining in with the torment, putting Mandarin subtitles on screen as the carriers sing several choruses of a song called 'Oh what an ugly bride'. Throughout Yimou defies expectations, even in the addition of an early voiceover from an apparent descendent of the characters that states outright that some people believe the tale, some don't. This could obviously be seen as a way of getting around the censors, a compromise if you like allowing them to cast doubts on the truthfulness of the narrative, but regardless it also results in a fairy tale-like feel, albeit a traditional fairy tale in all its original cruelty and violence, particularly in the stripped-back story and the staggering carnage and slaughter the Imperial Japanese army bring about when they invade. The sorghum fields of the title meanwhile are the scene of Nine's first moment of true release, being removed from her encased existence and going willingly with a kidnapper she's already unnerved by first meeting his gaze then smiling as he touches her with the inquisitive, even keen sensuality of a sheltered being; the red a metaphor for the deflowering of her virginity and her ensuing passage into adulthood. Yimou's following films (at least until his wuxia crowd-pleasers) were equally inflammatory and brilliant and his 1994 work To Live saw him handed a ban from directing in his native country for two years but he arguably never matched the inspired wonder of Red Sorghum, try as he (and Li) did.