Chinese Filmmaker Looks Back to Future : Movies: Director examines the plight of women in China in ‘Golden Lotus.’

She’s young, she’s beautiful and she’s got all of Hong Kong talking about the reincarnation of China’s most celebrated “slut of all time.” She is Clara Law, a 1985 graduate of the acclaimed National Film School in England who is one of Asia’s hottest new film directors and only one of three working woman directors in the fast-paced competitive Hong Kong movie industry.

Combining lush period costumes and a modern setting with illicit romance, mystery and reincarnation, Law is clearly poised for international acclaim through her newest film, “The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus,” which opened Friday, at Laemmle’s Monica Fourplex in Santa Monica and the Grand Fourplex in downtown Los Angeles.

The film opens at the Gates of Hell where a young woman faces a sorceress who is preparing her for reincarnation. The story then follows Lotus’ second chance in mid-1960s China, in a fast-moving drama filled with humor and tragedy delivered with a distinct social and political statement about the role of women.

Law, 32, takes Lotus, who is a well-known character from classic Chinese literature, and by placing her in modern-day China and Hong Kong turns around all preconceived notions about the most famous “fallen woman” of Sung dynasty China.

“Originally, I thought I would look at it from a moral point of view--in ancient times she was looked upon as a slut. But given a modern way of looking at women, she would be like any woman who wants to make her own decisions. So I tried to look at it from this perspective but I found it a bit difficult to do this in Hong Kong society where, basically, (social values) are still just the same (as in ancient times). Women still have to sell their bodies to be able to get to the top,” Law explained.

After several rewrites, Law and female scriptwriter Lee Pik Wah finally settled on portraying Lotus as a young woman who is constantly haunted by flashback scenes of her tortured previous life in ancient feudal China, linking her past, present and perhaps future to a predetermined fate.

In the original classic, Lotus is a beautiful woman in 10th-Century China who is sold, raped, abused and finally murdered--all at the hands of men. Although viewed as pornographic by both Mainland China and modern-day Hong Kong standards, the book nonetheless is considered the earliest social criticism written in China.

In “Reincarnation,” Law shows Lotus as a young woman who is not afraid to go after what she wants. But despite the modern setting, Lotus finds herself again a victim of fate. Stunningly beautiful, she attracts the unwanted attention of men and although raped by her school principal, it is she who is labeled a slut for attempting to fight him off. When she tries to again master her own fate and gives a pair of shoes to a handsome classmate, she is accused of stealing the shoes. She is then sent to the countryside for re-education after the classmate bows under peer pressure and disavows her.

But Lotus refuses to give up. In yet another attempt to escape from the confines of a society which has labeled her immoral, she enters into a loveless marriage with a homely but rich Hong Kong businessman who brings her to Hong Kong and showers her with gifts and affection. But Lotus appears to be unable to shake either of her pasts and soon discovers that the handsome classmate has been hired as a chauffeur by her new husband, who considers him to be a brother. In her past life, the Sung dynasty Lotus fell in love with her brother-in-law and is eventually killed by him after she seeks out another lover in frustration.

“We put her in a situation that she can remember bits of her past life at a time. She wants to overcome fate. She doesn’t want it to happen again. She wanted to be in control. . . .

“I wanted to make a positive statement about the woman,” said Law. “I felt that she relied on men because she had no way to defend herself against the basic social inequality against women. I had a certain sympathy for her. That’s why I wanted to put her into this life.

“But I wanted to keep a certain romantic notion of the story; what I feel is that the brother-in-law in fact loves her but he just doesn’t have the guts to show it. He wanted to be a man, a moral one. But in modern society, it’s not that hard to get your brother’s wife if you love her enough. But he is just not that kind of man. He is more a coward and I really wanted to portray the woman as superior--someone who is willing to pursue her love.”

Law’s transformation of Lotus from slut to heroine has raised some controversy in her native Hong Kong. After the film opened last fall, Law said that the audiences found it interesting but they were also disturbed by the subject. She said; “Chinese are, in a way, superstitious. They believe in reincarnation and the film may have made some people think they too were reliving past lives.”

Law feels that all of her films are linked by a common theme of feeling “homeless,” of not having a place where one can belong.

Her 80-minute graduation thesis film, “They Say the Moon is Fuller Here,” which won the Silver Plaque at the 1985 Chicago International Film Festival, explores the difficulties a young woman from Hong Kong faces when she goes to England. The autobiographical bent of the film came one step closer when Law couldn’t find the right actress to play the role of the woman and ended up both acting in and directing the film.

Law’s first commercial film, “The Other Half and the Other Half,” tackled the problem faced by many Hong Kong couples who have separated temporarily to ensure that they will have a place to go should China’s 1997 takeover of Hong Kong prove to be too restrictive.

“I wanted to explore what happens when a couple is split up in this way. In Hong Kong we call them ‘tai hoong yun’--people without their spouses. It has become very commonplace. What are you to do with your life when your other half is not there? That is a question that is worrying all Hong Kong people.”

Law was deeply affected by the Chinese government’s violent crackdown on the student democracy movement on June 4, which she watched live on Hong Kong television. “I was so shocked I cannot forget it,” she recalled. “It was late at night. I was glued to the set. When the lights went out at Tian An Men Square, everything went dark for me.

“This feeling of homelessness, of searching for freedom, for justice in the homeland and not able to find it . . . It seems to me that time is running out for China.”

Chen is a San Francisco-based freelance writer.