I watched Tsui Hark's 1994 film The Lovers last night. The gifted filmmaker has scored a home run with a terrific film about love and loss. The Lovers is a filmic poem depicting the Chinese fable of the butterfly lovers. The visuals are stunning, and the relatively slow pace allows the viewer the luxury of vicariously experiencing the initially hesitant but steadily growing attachment of the leads. I was so drawn into the emotional world of the two lovers that at several points in the film I was sobbing like a baby.

Once again Tsui has given us a movie about women and their uncertain place in the world, and for that alone he would score points with me. Charlie Yeung is wonderful in the lead role. She combines the goofiness of Anita Yuen with the wistful loveliness of Joey Wong. I can well understand how Hong Kong moviegoers fell in love with her in the mid-nineties and how grateful they were when she returned to the screen a few years later.

My only problem with the movie is the subtitles on my Universe DVD. They are probably as badly done as any movie in my collection. They are tiny and displayed in white, which makes them difficult to read at best and absolutely unreadable at worst. I am sure that I missed a number of plot points because of their inadequacy. Add The Lovers to the long list of DVDs desperately needing a new release. I am just grateful that I was able to see it at all, for I remember the movie as being unavailable in the not-too-distant past. Now for my question...





***** MAJOR SPOILER *****

At the end of the movie the bride-to-be stops at the tomb of her dead lover and kneels before his tablet. She bites her finger and in blood writes her last words to him before the earth swallows her up. Unfortunately those three words are not translated in the subtitles. I am dying to know what she wrote. Having grown up prior to the computer age, I am clueless about how to capture and transmit a screen shot on this forum--sorry. So I would greatly appreciate it if some kind soul who has the movie in his/her collection and who reads Chinese would check out the last scene and tell me what Ying Toi wrote to Shan Pak.


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Thanks, all.

Vicki

Mmm, a good film, that needs a decent DVD release! (Actually, I think there's a double pack of this and 'Love in the Time of Twilight' in France, which I'm sure is of the typically excellent quality HK films get when released on DVD in France... but with the typical lack of English subtitles).

I think she writes her own name 祝英台 Chuk Ying Toi

dleedlee wrote:I think she writes her own name 祝英台 Chuk Ying Toi.

Yes, that's her name. That implies she wants to be buried, after she died, in the same tomb with Leung Shan Pak as husband and wife.

Thanks for the information, Fan and Dennis. Very kind of you.

Actually I am slowly working my way through some books on how to read Chinese. I know that progress would be more consistent with a teacher, but my life circumstances make that difficult. So I am trying to make it on my own. Still have a long way to go, though.

Taijikid wrote:Actually I am slowly working my way through some books on how to read Chinese. I know that progress would be more consistent with a teacher, but my life circumstances make that difficult. So I am trying to make it on my own. Still have a long way to go, though.

Try the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced "Chinese Reader"(s) by John DeFrancis. They are very old, but have all recently gone back into softcover print (which should tell you something). They are extremely effective texts for learning how to read Chinese. And I cannot recommend them enough...

--guilao

Thanks for the book recommendations. Fortunately I work in the library system of a large public university and can probably find infrequently-used copies in the stacks.