Abstract
This chapter examines the ways East Asian women filmmakers Naomi Kawase, Yim soon-rye, and Li Yu envisage conditions of possibility for indecorous femininities to breach patriarchal expectation. Generating images of corporeal disobedience, Kawase, Yim, and Li negotiate representations of girlhood and womanhood against Confucianist, neoliberal, and male-directed images of women, revealing femininity in multiplicity as well as the implications of unbecoming women in the global age. In addition to producing novel representations of indecent girlhood and womanhood, Kawase, Yim, and Li also resist clarity, linearity, and expected cinematic pleasures—opting to produce uncooperative authorships and disobedient film forms. Through structures of aggression, comic unruliness, and generic allegory, the films of Kawase, Yim, and Li demonstrate the ways contemporary East Asian women’s cinema can offer new kinds of being-in-the-world and modes of engagement with cinematic un-femininities. Sharing a politics of discontent and an anti-social aesthetics of negative affects and formal insubordination, all three filmmakers seek to destabilize gendered sociality and heteronormativity.
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Filmography
Blood of the Beasts (Les Sang Des Bêtes). Directed by Georges Franju. 1949.
Buddha Mountain (觀音山). Directed by Li Yu. 2010.
Daisies (Sedmikrásky). Directed by Vêra Chitylová. 1966.
Dam Street (紅顏). Directed by Li Yu. 2005.
Double Xposure (二次曝光). Directed by Li Yu. 2012.
Embracing (Ni tsutsumarete). Directed by Naomi Kawase. 1992.
Ever Since We Loved (萬物生長). Directed by Li Yu. 2015.
Firefly (Hotaru). Directed by Naomi Kawase. 2000.
Fish and Elephant (今年夏天). Directed by Li Yu. 2001.
Forever the Moment (Uri saengae choego-ui sungan). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2007.
Furious 7. Directed by James Wan. 2015.
If You Were Me (Yeoseot gae ui siseon). Directed by Yim Soon-rye, Jeong Jae-eun, Park Chan-wook, Park Jin-pyo, Park Kwang-su, and Yeo Kyun-dong. 2003.
Keeping the Vision Alive—Women in Korean Filmmaking (Areumdaun saengjon). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2001.
Lost in Beijing (蘋果). Directed by Li Yu. 2007.
Mourning Forest (Mogari no mori). Directed by Naomi Kawase. 2001.
Nanayo. Directed by Naomi Kawase. 2008.
Promenade in the Rain (Wujungsanchaek). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 1994.
Rolling Home with a Bull (Sowa hamgge yeonghaenghaneun beom). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2010.
Still the Water (Futatsume no mado). Directed by Naomi Kawase. 2014.
Suzaku (Moe no suzaku). Directed by Naomi Kawase. 1997.
Tarachime. Directed by Naomi Kawase. 2006.
Three Friends (Saechingu). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 1996.
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). Directed by Luis Buñuel. 1929.
Waikiki Brothers (Waikiki beuradeoseu). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2001.
The “Weight” of Her (Geunyeoui muge). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2003.
The Whistleblower (Jeboja). Directed by Yim Soon-rye. 2014.
The White-Haired Girl (白毛女). Directed by Bin Wang and Hua Shui. 1950.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (天浴). Directed by Joan Chen. 1998.
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Zuo, M. (2018). Unbecomings in East Asian Women’s Cinema: Naomi Kawase, Yim Soon-rye, and Li Yu. In: Magnan-Park, A., Marchetti, G., Tan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95822-1_26
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