Garden of Repose

Dir: Zhu Shilin
Orig Story: Garden of Repose by Ba Jin
Scrs: Xia Yan (uncredited), Zhu Shilin
Prod Co: Feng Huang
Cast: Hsia Moon, Bow Fong, Ping Fan, Wang Xiaoyan, Bill Chan (aka Shek Sau)
1964 | Colour | DCP | Mandarin | Chi & Eng Subtitles | 93 min

Garden of Repose opens with the sale of the titular mansion during the war. Its former owner, Yang Menchi, is hopelessly addicted to drugs. Abandoned by his loved ones, he is forced to sell the family property. The buyer, Yao Guodong, is father to Xiaohu, a spoiled, unruly child who pays little attention to his studies. The two men fail to escape their tragic fates—a reflection of the rot at the heart of the feudalist system.

Screenwriter Xia Yan’s adaptation of Ba Jin’s novel was written with Hsia Moon in mind, and shifts the novel’s focus to Guodong’s second wife and emphasises the education of children. Zhu Shilin then made further edits to the story, making it more accessible and streamlined for the audience. His subtle, understated direction successfully conveys the original novel’s refined, melancholic tone. As in Ba Jin’s story, the film highlights the warm, touching interactions between Mengchi and his daughter (who is a son in the novel), suggesting the ambivalent attitudes that both filmmaker and novelist had towards traditional Chinese culture and values as an object of nostalgia as well as critique. In bolstering the role of Xiaohu’s grandmother, and also by extending the scenes of Hsia Moon challenging figures of power for the sake of her stepchild’s education, Zhu makes concrete and tangible the dark side of feudalism. At the same time, he also perfects Hsia’s image as the ideal woman who combines the best of both the old and new worlds, and in doing so ends the film on a note of hope.

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