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cmovie: Painted Skin (2008)
Feb. 19th, 2010 05:31 pmBased on one of the stories of Liao Zhai, a collection of hundreds of Chinese horror and supernatural stories (I’m not sure what the proper name is. I’m most familiar with The Strange Tales of Liao Zhai, which is the English title of a series about 6 of the stories from several years ago, but I don’t think that’s correct for the original stories.) this is about a fox spirit, Xiao Wei, who eats human hearts for power and youth. As fox spirits do. When she’s “rescued” from bandits by General Wang Sheng, she falls in love with him, but he’s loyal to his wife, Pei Rong. Pei Rong, meanwhile, is very suspicious of Xiao Wei and asks the general’s brother, Pang Yong (who is Sekritly In Love with her), to learn the truth about her, and the mysterious deaths nearby that began soon after she arrived. The deaths are actually caused by a lizard demon in love with Xiao Wei (the onesided loves, they are many) and Pang Yong teams up with Xia Bing, a young woman descended from demon hunters, but with little actual experience.
The movie is amazingly beautiful (How do Chinese movies always make the desert so pretty?) but I suspect the story was rewritten a lot to emphasize the romance. But then, I suspect it was also rewritten for Moar Things For Women To Do, and likely a bit less of a good/bad binary between the heroines, so I won’t really complain. Most of the cast was excellent (though it was odd seeing Zhao Wei as Xiao Wei after just finishing Princess Returning Pearl, and Donnie Yen, while excellent, was oddly less attractive than usual) but the guy playing the general was like a black hole of dullness trying to suck everyone else in, with the rest of the cast struggling mightily against him. I’m not sure if the problem was the character or the actor. Probably both.
Also, while I really liked the movie, the only English subs I’ve found online are awful, and it doesn’t have a licensed version that I can find. (If I’m wrong, tell me! Please!) A large part of my understanding of various parts was based other similar stories and mythology bits I’ve seen in various wuxia, though I think you can still largely follow it without. But with struggling.
Here’s the trailer:
The movie is amazingly beautiful (How do Chinese movies always make the desert so pretty?) but I suspect the story was rewritten a lot to emphasize the romance. But then, I suspect it was also rewritten for Moar Things For Women To Do, and likely a bit less of a good/bad binary between the heroines, so I won’t really complain. Most of the cast was excellent (though it was odd seeing Zhao Wei as Xiao Wei after just finishing Princess Returning Pearl, and Donnie Yen, while excellent, was oddly less attractive than usual) but the guy playing the general was like a black hole of dullness trying to suck everyone else in, with the rest of the cast struggling mightily against him. I’m not sure if the problem was the character or the actor. Probably both.
Also, while I really liked the movie, the only English subs I’ve found online are awful, and it doesn’t have a licensed version that I can find. (If I’m wrong, tell me! Please!) A large part of my understanding of various parts was based other similar stories and mythology bits I’ve seen in various wuxia, though I think you can still largely follow it without. But with struggling.
Here’s the trailer: