(青蛇, literal Chinese title: The Teal/Green Snake)
is a 1993 Hong Kong fantasy film made by Tsui Hark. It is the adaptation of a novel of the same title by Lilian Lee. The novel itself is a variation of a Chinese folk tale Madame White Snake, where Lillian Lee tells the story from the perspective of Xiaoqing, the Green Snake, who normally plays a supporting role behind the main character Bai Suzhen, the White Snake.
As the title suggests, the movie also features Xiaoqing as the main character.An overzealous Buddhist monk named Fat-hoi (Vincent Zhao) has trained for 20 years to solely banish demons from the Human World due to his prejudice against spiritual beings seeking to improve themselves. He captures a spider in human form, who has trained for 200 years to be able to reincarnate, and throws him underneathe a gazebo. Fat-hoi is later seen meditating, apparently being haunted by sins of the human mind and is being punished spiritually for his mistake. He eventually releases the Spider spirit.
A storm takes place while Fat-hoi goes into the forest and he attacks two Snake spirits. But after he noticed that they were only preventing rain from hitting a woman giving birth, he releases them. Again, he is haunted by sins of the human mind, primarily the female body. The two snakes, White Snake (Joey Wong) and Green Snake (Maggie Cheung), are later seen on the rooftop of a festival where Green Snake participates while White Snake eyes a local scholar Hsui Xien (Wu Hsing-Kuo). The two have been training for many centuries to take human form and experience the love, freedom and wisdom that is supposedly only available to humans. White Snake is the more experienced one and proceeds to get engaged to Hsui Xien, with whom she plans to have a child which would complete her passage into the mortal realm;
Green Snake is the younger and more impulsive of the two sisters but she is not yet quite convinced of the benefits of the human world. They both move into their magically created house and start a successful medical practice in the town. Other than Hsui Xien’s visit, the two gets another visit unexpectedly from a buffoonish Taoist whom Green Snake leaves the household to take care of.
Because of White Snake’s beautiful charms, Hsui Xien, once known as the toughest and most dedicated scholar of the village, is starting to lose his reputation. In another heavy storm, a flood ravaged the village. White Snake and Green Snake helps to vanquish the flood and are helped by Fat-hoi, whom they remembered from the forest. After the flood is gone, White Snake and Green Snake tend to the medical needs of the villagers and they’ve become greatly respected. However, slowly, Green Snake is starting to envy White Snake and is beginning to yearn for the affections of a human, often using Hsui Xien as an experiment. Though caught multiple times, White Snake usually shrugs this off. One day while teaching, Hsui Xien spontaneously comes back to see White Snake but instead sees a large reptilian tail in their bathing room.
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Watch from Mainland China
爱奇艺
Bibliography :
李艳平，电 影《 青 蛇 》中 的 女 性 主 义，《风格与特色》第660期，2016。
朱艳芸，性别主义的消解与重构* ———试论《青蛇》从小说到电影的主题流变，《湖南工业大学学报》Vol.16 No.3，2011。