The young educated singing teacher Wei Ming leaves her family and sets out with her daughter to find a career and a husband. She has little money, dreams of writing a book and falls in love with a literary editor. Then her daughter falls ill, which forces her to make some compromising decisions…
With great visual inventiveness, the film is a magnificent portrait of a woman. Based on the life story of Ai Xia, an actress who killed herself, the film is all the more tragic as it is Ruan Lingyu’s last. Mistreated by the press, most likely abused, she committed suicide at the age of twenty-four, 8 March 1935 – International Women’s Day.
M.M.
