This Woman

Beibei speaks with astonishment about how she used to pliably conform to the role prescribed to women in China. She married. She had a child. It’s surprising, given the aversion this 30-something woman feels for the concept of being “a good wife.”

Against the backdrop of the encroaching COVID-19 epidemic, this film explores the web of conventional roles in which women so often lose themselves. What happens to the “I” in the face of all those imposed personas: mother, daughter, wife? The film immerses us in the life of a woman who refuses to let her identity be defined by others, who demands the right to find out for herself who she is and what she wants. Moving from city to city and from lover to lover, she defies Chinese society’s expectations of what a woman should do and be.

The sophisticated editing and composition of shots suggests the film may be toying with fact and fiction—it is a game whose rules are never fully revealed. And perhaps that is precisely the point. As Beibei herself remarks, something can be both real and fake at the same time. Ultimately, the film is an intelligent deconstruction of the role-playing game that is identity. And while roles can be constraining and oppressive, they can also be liberating at times.