Representations of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Contemporary Chinese Female-Directed Cinema: Motherhood and Daughterhood in Three Selected Films

From September 2015 to February 2016, I conducted independent research for the completion of my senior thesis as a Chinese major; my research and analysis addresses primary cinematic sources (Ma Liwen’s Gone is the One Who... [ view full abstract ]

From September 2015 to February 2016, I conducted independent research for the completion of my senior thesis as a Chinese major; my research and analysis addresses primary cinematic sources (Ma Liwen’s Gone is the One Who Held Me Dearest in the World, 2002; Zhang Mengqi’s Self-Portrait with Three Women, 2010; and Chen Li’s Ballet, 2005) and secondary critical sources in both English and Chinese. In my work I look closely at three Chinese contemporary female-directed films with the objective of identifying and examining key motifs in the films’ conceptualizations of motherhood, daughterhood, and the mother-daughter relationship. I read each film closely and consider depictions of women in post-1949 cinema, the development of “women’s cinema,” and maternal discourse in male- and female-directed filmography. I found that there is a universality in the depiction of the mother-daughter relationship that emerges in the three films, which all share the following features: role reversals in mother and daughter responsibilities; the centrality of the filial obligation of the daughter to her mother; the representation of the daughter as an extension of the mother; the presence of a silent yet dominating patriarchy that limits women’s capacity for self-identification; and the deep complexity of the mother-daughter bond.