Warning: Spoilers! (If you haven’t yet watched Heaven’s Wedding Gown, you should try to catch up with this first rate romantic melodrama very soon. The thread for this series on AsianFanatics Forums offers several options for viewing versions with English subtitles, and for Melbourne readers, there are also at least two outlets in and off Bourke Street in the CBD where you can purchase the box set of DVDs.)
Fashion designer Lu Zihao (Leon Williams) and farm girl Tao Ai Qing (Cyndi Wang) in HWG
The first time I watched Heaven’s Wedding Gown in late 2006, I was intrigued by two major action scenes that took place in a muddy field near a clifftop that in the English subtitles was called ‘The Cliff of Heaven’. In the fictional world of the drama series, it is the characters from the margins of society who know about this place where masculinity is put to the test and other scores are settled. In a spin-off of the deadly game of chicken, the idea is that challengers ride motorcycles as fast as they dare straight for the cliff edge and the last to turn aside or jump off is the winner. The gangster Jibusai (martial arts expert Liu Xu Hao), takes Xiang Zhen (Wang Zhi Yu) there. He has treated her very badly in a very confronting earlier scene. In the forthcoming motorcycle duel, he is prepared to give her a handicap, he sneers, because she is a woman. Xiang Zhen, however, is a tough survivor with revenge on her mind and she carries out her own agenda very effectively.
The gangsters Jibusai (Liu Xu Hao), left, and Ying (Jacky Zhu) on a blasted heath in a scene from HWG
Motorcyle racer Chen Hai Nuo (Ming Dao), has lost his professional license because he took part in an illegal race against this same Jibusai, and he and his erstwhile racing team have become in effect a motorcycle gang. They know about the Cliff of Heaven, too. Hai Nuo challenges his rival in love, gentile fashion designer Lu Zihao (Leon Williams), to a duel there. Whoever loses, he proposes, will agree to give up sweet farm girl Ai Qing (Cyndi Williams) forever. (She cannot quite make up her mind between her two handsome suitors).
From left: Coffee (Chen Zun Wen), Lotto (Sun Rui) and Chen Hai Nuo (Ming Dao) at the motorcycle races in a scene from HWG
As the drama progresses, it becomes less and less about who will win the girl’s heart and more and more about the rivalry between the two young men. By now in both a literal and metaphoric fever, Zihao agrees to to the duel even though he has never ridden a motorcycle before. His faithful chauffeur, Stan (Allan, surname unknown) drives him onto the muddy yellow soil of the jousting ground. He emerges from the Mercedes clad in a very dashing motorcycle jacket and cargo pants. (Where did he get those from, V once asked, and when did he have time to change?) In a denoument featuring a first rate stunt, only Hai Nuo’s change of heart saves Zihao from certain death, and he is impressed by the fashionista’s courage and his commitment to Ai Qing. (Any reader who wishes to explore further the theme of competing visions of masculinity in HWG need look no further than the posts by DTLCT and Vanadia on the HWG thread on AsianFanatics Forums.
Chen Hai Nuo (Ming Dao), Lu Zihao (Leon Williams) and Stan (Allen) confront each other at the Cliff of Heaven.
The two Cliff of Heaven scenes have obvious resonances with the famous car/cliff scene from Rebel without a Cause, but I wondered if scriptwriter Luo Cai Juan was also paying subtle homage to Luis Bunuel’s 1952 classic film Subida al Cielo. In the Bunuel film, Subida al Cielo, or Cliff of Heaven (iterally Ascent to Heaven), is the name of a dangerous, cliffside stretch of road in the Mexican state of Guerrero that must be traversed by a rickety country bus. Mexican film critic Alejandro Cervantes, in a recent retrospective on the film, points out that the treacherous cliffside is also a metaphor for lust. First there is an Adam and Eve-like fall from grace that occurs when femme fatale Raquel (Lilia Prado) seduces earnest newlywed Oliverio (Esteban Marquez), and second there are the transports of delight presumably felt by male viewers of this scene.
Lilia Prado as Raquel in Bunuel's Subida al Cielo
There are so many obvious differences between this monument of the Mexican cinema and the quotidian Taiwanese television soap that perhaps I am drawing a vey long bow here. Subida al Cielo is a road movie in which very diverse characters are thrown together in the confines of a bus, whereas HWG, aside from a few motorcycle scenes, is largely static and Taipei-based, and the leads move in and out of each other’s lives as if in a dance. And Raquel is purposefully seductive whereas Ai Qing is an ingenue.
There are, however, some similarities. Both of these works locate a nexus of fate, desire and danger at a cliff face near the ocean. The ‘Hai’ in Chen Hai Nuo’s name may relate to this web of smbolism as it means ’sea’. There is some exploration of masculinity aboard the Mexican country bus, too. There is an overweeningly macho political candidate who gets his just deserts, too. Both works involve a wedding, Subida’s at the beginning, and HWG’s, as is crucial in a romantic meldodrama, in the final episode. Popular songs about love and loss feature in the soundtracks, Ai de Tian Guo (愛的天國) among many others in HWG and La Sanmarquena in Bunuel’s masterwork.
A poster for Subida al Cielo, Mexico, 1952
Does anyone else out there in the blogsphere agree with me on this? Is the similarity between the names Cliff of Heaven and Subida al Cielo only a coincidence?
You know what’s even more funny? I found out ‘Lovers in Paris’ is so much like Heaven’s Wedding Gown in a lot of areas. I’ll tell you later if you want to know. (It aired around the same time so I don’t know what’s the story there but still something to ponder about.)
I never knew Liu Xu Hao is a martial arts expert. Cool. Learnt something new today.
By: DTLCT on June 3, 2009
at 11:35 pm