Peach Blossom Land merges the activities of a theatre together with 2 plays due to a mistake in booking for rehearsals. The script is excellent and every sentence has double meaning where any interpretation will potentially cause misunderstandings. Instead of the usual play within a play, it is 2 plays in a movie. Brigitte Lin plays an actress whose role is Yun Zhifan and she acts in the 1st play which is about the mid 1900s where many Chinese left China for Taiwan and who is separated from her lover Jiang played by Chin Shih Chieh. The 2 lovers are re-united many years later but shortly as both have spouses to return to. The 2nd play is about a fisherman (Lee Li-Chun) whose wife Spring Flower (Ismene Ting) is having an affair with Master Yuan (Ku Pao-Ming). The fisherman was lost one day whilst fishing and came to a secret paradise-like valley. Both plays merge in the middle of the show.
This show has a lot of wit as well as serious issues. It has some political overtones. A marvellous play. It would take a few viewings to absorb its meaning. A show strong in script and acting abilities. The Taipei Times Online has a concise synopsis on the show.
Brigitte shines in her role. As an actress playing Yun Zhi Fan, she was pretty convincing as roles in the theatre are always larger than that in TV and movies because the audience is not close-up to the screen. Thus she was larger than life than her usual role in dramatic movies. During the breaks, she has such natural behaviour that you can't differentiate whether she is being herself or acting as an actress. Peach Blossom Land brings out in Brigitte a look at her roles as herself, movie actress and a theatric actress.
There is a Peach Blossom Land Soundtrack picts, mp3 where Brigitte Lin sings "Let Me Gaze at You" and "Take it easy" and is in several of the dialogs.
There are 2 Taiwanese books, titled Wo An Lian Tao HuaYuan picts and An Lian Tao Hua Yuan picts about how the show is produced and it is written in Traditional Chinese. A review will be done on it in future. In addition, in another book called Transnational Chinese Cinemas has devoted half a chapter to an analysis of this thought-provoking movie. Transnational Chinese Cinema contains an excellent review of Peach Blossom Lan with a synposis as well as interpretion of the social and political meanings behind the play. In a few Chinese movie books (definitely not the action movie books), Peach Blossom Land is always discussed. I was told the English translation of the show is found in An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama.
As the movie is produced by Performance Workshop, thus it is not surprising that an excellent web site would be at Performance Workshop. Other information would be at the Taiwanese government web site on Performance Workshop.
In case you are wondering, Peach Blossom Land is my favourite Chinese movie. It is such a delightful movie. I have always enjoy watching plays and this movie gives you the raw feeling of watching "live" plays as well as the scenes behind the curtain.
Click to see the Peach Blossom Land LD and VCD covers. picts
Click to see the Peach Blossom Land Photo Gallery. picts
Click here to download the Winamp Classic Skin for Peach Blossom Land.
With our previous movie polls, 6 people voted with 83% (5 votes) who thought it was excellent, 0% (0 votes) who thought it was good, 16% (1 vote) who thought it was OK, 0% (0 votes) who thought it was bad and 0% (0 votes) who thought it was terrible.
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Awards won by Peach Blossom Land
Cast : Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia, Chin Shih-Chieh, Lee Li-Chun, Ku
Pao-Ming, Ismene Ting Nai Zang, Ding Chung, Lin Li-Ching, Chen Li-Mei,
Li Wei-Hui
Director : Stan
Lai Sing Tsun
Writer : Stan Lai
Producer : Ding Nai-Chu
Editor : Chen Po-Wen
Sound : Tu Duu-Chih
Music : Fumio Itabashi, Kazutoki Umezu
Costume : William Chang Suk-Ping
Camera : Christopher Doyle
Spoken : Mandarin, Cantonese
Subtitles : None
Film : Taiwanese
Distributor : Universe Laser & Video Co. Ltd
