‘Is this the future’
Xialu Guo’s UFO In Her Eyes
UFO In Her Eyes (2011), Xiaolu Guo's witty and satirical adaptation of her 2010 eponymous novel, succeeds in amusing the audience with its somewhat absurd and surreal plot, whilst retaining that barb of truthfulness so important to satire, even if the film's message seems a little simple at times.
The story of UFO In Her Eyes begins when Kwok Yun (Shi Ke), an unmarried peasant woman in her 30s, experiences what appears to be a UFO encounter. Immediately afterwards, Yun comes across a western traveller suffering from a snake bite. She takes him home and tends to his wound, but he disappears when she leaves to fetch medicine.
These two possibly-connected events (punning on the dual meaning of the word alien) precipitate a great change in Kwok Yun's village. First a government agent arrives to investigate the UFO sighting, shortly followed by a thank-you note from the westerner Yun saved, containing a $3,000 cheque. The cheque is intercepted by Chief Chang (Mandy Zhang), the village's zealous, communist mayor, and put into "education"; by which she doesn't mean the local school, but rather a half-baked get-rich-quick scheme that involves re-educating the villagers in the doctrine of capitalism and turning the village into an exploitative UFO theme park and tourist destination.
Despite the title, the film is not the tale of Kwok Yun the individual, but rather of the community as a whole. Accordingly, the narrative incorporates multiple perspectives, alternating between segments in colour, black-and-white sequences from the P.O.V. of the external government inspector, and even several P.O.V. shots from an animal in
the village, who's warped, distorted visions usually punctuate the absurdity of the action.
Yun herself functions merely as an inadvertent catalyst for the dramatic, overnight globalisation of the village. Similarly, although somewhat more predictably, she becomes the catalyst for the divorce of the headmaster, with whom she is having an affair, and for the eviction of the migrant bicycle repairman, with whom the racist villagers deem her friendship inappropriate. Far from celebrating Yun's individualistic non-conformism, the film throws a critical light on her selfish refusal to accept that she has a position within and a responsibility to the community, even as Shi Ke's weary performance wins the audience's sympathy.
It is Mandy Zhang's Chief who steals the show, however. Fervent, hypocritical, avaricious, and with just a hint of maternal affection for the villagers, she skirts a fine line between hare-brained incompetence and a kind of innate bureaucratic genius that allows her to thrive within the Chinese communist system.
It is hard not to wish that there were as much nuance in the film's satire as there is in these two performances, however. Capitalist greed is hardly a difficult or original target, and apart from the somewhat alien (to western audiences) concept that Yun ought to sacrifice her individuality for the good of the community, the film rarely seems to challenge its viewers.
At times the camera seems to fetishize the rural, peasant lifestyle; long shots of the local fisherman and his cormorants, or Yun's grandfather walking through rice paddies, are a little reminiscent of a national geographic documentary. All forms of modernisation become lumped in with capitalism. Nevertheless, while the grotesque drunken revels of
those prospering from the village's commercialisation are intercut with a violent riot by the peasants whose land is being bulldozed, it is no less effective because of the simplicity of the message.
The film's ending is one of those abrupt, enigmatic endings, so beloved in arthouse cinema, which will no doubt infuriate some. And yet it is easy to see the difficulty of ending such a film. As the village spirals further and further into a capitalist dystopia, carp ponds and rice paddies being wiped out by five star hotels and golf courses, there is no foreseeable conclusion in sight, no logical cut-off point.
by Richard Les
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