The Girls to be Married

Five young girls, faced with the prospect of marriage (four of them arranged), make a suicide pact: it's to be hanging en masse, bedecked in festive red corduroy. As they wait, their family travails give them every reason to wish for a rapid getaway. From the shocking, perverse tableau at the beginning - a bride hangs herself during a wedding procession - the film draws links between love and death, underscoring the grim lot reserved for women in the rural community in which it is set. Admirers of Ju Dou will recognise some of the settings, and even some of the visual style; but in typical Hong Kong fashion, the more sober themes are tempered by splashes of spectacle and heart-tugging rhetoric (it's heavy on the soft-focus). Moving, beautiful, and not a little unsettling.