INTERESTING TIMES - THE WAR OF LOVE

Beijing social worker Hu Yanping and her friend Liu Xian have an unusual hobby. They run an amateur dating agency.

Their ‘love agency’ attracts many different types of Beijingers, women and men all eying each other for the shape of their bodies, the set of their minds and the size of their wallets. The two women’s ad hoc love agency flourishes in a social climate where China’s new career woman though free from the domestic slavery of an arranged marriage, discover her new found wealth and independence far from making her an attractive marriage partners actually posses a threat to many of her more conservative male counterparts. The consequence being a lot of new career women out there looking for husbands.

However this is just half the story. In sharp contrast to her dating work social worker Hu Yanping spends her working day as a lawyer dealing with women victims of marital breakdown and domestic violence at a branch office of the China Wome’s League. Hu Yanping’s divorce clients provide a dark polemic to the love agency, ranging as they do from those fighting for financial settlement to those who need to escape serious domestic violence.

As these two contrasting storylines unfold yet another one emerges: Hu Yanping reveals herself as a woman trapped in a deeply unhappy marriage from which there is no escape – her husband is a soldier and Chinese law denies soldier’s wives the right to divorce. The marriage broker and divorce councillor can only look on in envy at her clients whilst her own life falls apart.

Release year:

2002

Director:

Duan Jinchuan & Jiang Yue

Co production:

BBC, ARTE, NRK, SVT, YLE & TV2 Danmark

Running length:

44 minutes

Production company:

Decameron Films

 

Categories:

• People & Culture