Butterfly Dream

Zhuang Zi was a Taoist philosopher of the Warring States era. Later playwrights fabricated stories about him, and one of them is Zhuang Zi Tests His Wife, which has been adapted into different regional operas. The play had also been adapted for screen, including one that was arguably the first film of Hong Kong, and also Butterfly Dream. The story starts with Zhuang Zi helping a widow to dry her deceased husband's tomb, and the widow offers to be his concubine. Zhuang's wife despises the widow and vows she will remain loyal to him. Zhuang suddenly falls ill and dies, and soon his wife falls for a visiting prince, who claims to be ill and needs to eat the brain of a man. The wife opens Zhuang's coffin to get the brain but the dead husband suddenly comes back to life...The film's plot basically follows the classic play, with new characters like Zhuang's father added. Zhuang is caught between pursuing philosophical studies and his filial duty to produce offspring and this conflict is brought to life by the opera-film star Sun Ma Si-tsang, complemented beautifully by Fung Wong Nui as the spirited and flirtatious wife. The father who demands Zhuang to bear children is played with amusing brilliance by Lee Hoi-chuen. An opera classic featuring interplay of the sensual and the philosophical is adapted into a film with appeal for the popular audience.

# Post-screening talk with Eric Tsang Siu-wang

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