Sylvia Chang deals with love in her latest film
Sylvia Chang didn’t care to make sacrifices for love in her youth.
But now aged 64, the veteran Taiwan filmmaker re-ponders the complexity of love in her upcoming movie, Love Education.
The movie will open on the Chinese mainland on Nov 3.
Love Education was the closing film at South Korea’s 22nd Busan International Film Festival, which ended on Saturday.
It recently received seven nominations at this year’s Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei, which will be held on Nov 25.
Set in Central China’s Henan province, the 120-minute movie tells the story of a dispute to move an old man’s tomb in a village.
The argument drags out on for three generations, and after a series conflicts and confessions, the family members finally understand each other.
The story was originally written by You Xiaoying, a scriptwriter from Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, based on her own experience.
She sent the script Chang in 2012.
“It seems like a simple story, but it gave me room to develop it into a movie,” Chang says in Beijing.
Chang started to rewrite the story with You after receiving the script. The film was shot in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, in 2016.
Zhengzhou is a city that is often ignored for its geographical characteristics but remembered as a fastdeveloping smaller Chinese city, Chang explains.
She also invited Mark Lee Ping-bin, an award-winning Taiwan cinematographer, to join her crew for Love Education.
It is the first movie she filmed on the mainland, so she did a lot of field research before shooting it as a “down-to-earth story”.
“And because I’m a mother, a daughter and a wife, I analyzed each role to figure out how they would react to the situations in the film,” Chang says. to
In the movie, the grandmother is shown waiting for seven decades for her husband to return to her after he leaves her for another woman.
Chang says the movie’s name revolves around her understanding that love is knowledge.
“I want to tell of the importance of communicating with each other, not just to know the younger generations but also to know what problems parents are facing,” Chang says.
Besides directing, Chang also plays the lead role, a 55-year-old woman who loses her mother and fights with her daughter who wants to move out.
Film director Tian Zhuangzhuang, who makes his acting debut in this film as Chang’s husband, was nominated for best actor at the Golden Horse festival.
“I actually learned acting in college but my performance was bad then. I just tried to understand my role and reflect instinctively,” says the 65-year-old filmmaker in Beijing.
“The story involves many emotions ... It’s enlightenment to find love.”
Chang has managed to bring to the screen some hidden feelings that people have, which is “extraordinary”, he says.
“And, she found an easy way to present those with action, conflicts and humor.”