Zhu Yingtai’s suicide is revealed as despair, not romance. Trapped with Liang’s decaying corpse, she confronts the truth: her cross-dressing education led only to entombment. Dual narratives—lyrical “shadow” sequences romanticizing their past vs. claustrophobic “reality” in the grave—expose the millennial lie. When Zhu claws through soil, her bloodied hands grasp roots of the patriarchy that buried her. The final frame shows her standing alone at dawn: resurrection begins when love myths crumble. violence.
by Wei Yi (China)
Cal Film Festival 