Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan

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When viewed in a historical perspective, 1972´s "Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan" is a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking. Not only does the film deftly blend a romance with bloody fighting, women are at the center of the production. It´s also a feminist work, empowering the females to take matters into their own hands, to take charge of their destinies. Oh yeah, it deal with lesbianism, too. All within a scant 87 minutes.

After she is kidnapped and brought to a brothel, young Ainu (Lily Ho) is taken under the wing of Madame Chun (Betty Pi Ti), the woman who runs the brothel. When a would-be savior is viciously murdered, Ainu vows revenge against Chun and the men who use her as their own. A brazen seductress, Ainu gains the trust of each of her tormentors, then proceeds to kill them, even as a new policeman stands by unable to act. But what of Chun, with whom Ainu has begun an affair?

Despite the subject matter, "Intimate Confessions" never revels in shocking the audience. Rather, each sex scene is artfully suggested while leaving the gory details to the imagination. Early on, when Ainu is tied up in order to learn a lesson, the camera stays trained on her unblemished face while Chun lowers herself to her knees. No sound from the act of oral sex is heard, yet based on Ainu´s facial contortions, we know what is going on. Even later, with every sexual encounter, the most graphic director Chu Yuan allows himself to get are the bare torso´s of the women. It turns the film into a suggestive piece, rather than an offensive one.

Which led, at least in part, to the Chinese people accepted the film with a heavy homosexual storyline in 1972. Perhaps, though, their willingness to embrace the picture has an equal amount to do with the depiction of lesbianism. There is a long history of nonthreatening gay characters in American cinema, from the Jack MacFarlane´s (TV´s "Will & Grace") of the world to Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine in "The Children´s Hour." There is also an equally long list of female-female pairings an audience will buy into, while discarding the male-male couplings. As long as there is no deep emotional connection between the characters suggesting "they" are like "us," the audience doesn´t mind. And that´s exactly what happens here. Chun and Ainu´s relationship is strictly about the sex. Even when they are together (and I use that term loosely), a male member of the audience can fall back on the scenes of Ainu with males, allowing her to be "normal" and accepted.

Throughout the film, Chun is the master manipulator to Ainu´s naïve waif. It is Chun who indoctrinates her to prostitution, Chun teaches her to be a deadly killer and Chun who seduces her to every form of sex. In that sense, especially considering the climax, the audience will walk away seeing Chun as the ostensible bad guy. Of course she is. She´s the lesbian, feeding into two different stereotypes: the first, that all gay people are immoral and sadistic; and two, they must be vanquished by the forces of "good" (ie. heterosexuality) in the end. There is no real shock or revelation to Ainu´s declaration she doesn´t love Chun. We expect it the entire time, owing to the fact she swears revenge on her captors, so to speak. Little wonder the character and actress the audience is supposed to sympathize with has played the lesbian card for half the movie in an attempt to destroy the men who destroyed her life. There´s the feminist angle.

Not only does Ainu do away with the evil men-nearly single handedly, for the record-but she also dispatches their minion, the demonic lesbian. But in a cruel twist not befitting the underlying feminism, it is the males who are the last characters standing. Bringing us all back to the standard norm for society. Women of any stripe are subservient to men, men will always rule the day and anyone engaging in deviant behavior will ultimately be punished. So there´s nothing truly groundbreaking here, no molds broken or standards flipped upside down.

Then there are phrases writer Chiu Kang-Chien uses to reinforce the negative connotations about lesbians and homosexuality. Chun´s male partner in the brothel business, evidently looking to get into her robes, maintains at the end "the likes of you don´t deserve my love." As if to reinforce the message, descriptors such as despicable and heartless are thrown into the mix, further feeding into the lesbian stereotype on display. At once elegant and feminine, Chun turns to a cold blooded killer with no regard for anything else. Watch as she employs the Ghost Hands technique in the final battle.

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