[5] Huang Yushan who initially worked for Central Motion Picture Company (CMPC) and for the Shaw Bros. is a director who has made a choice in favor of independent film.
The fact that her film Twin Bracelets received relatively much attention "enabled Huang to have in-depth discussions with American independent filmmakers and feminist directors.
"[8] Twin Bracelets takes place in Hui An, a remote coastal village of Fujian (a southern province of the People's Republic of China).
Juxtaposed to it, we find poetic scenes that portray female tenderness, as found in girls and young women who have not yet succumbed to the so-called realities of life.
Yet this act expresses her rebellion, her protest and revolt, and it lays bare the source of the female alliance of hope and the alternative vision it embodied.
And for a short time, enabled by their affection for each other, they lived like that, turning to each other, experiencing the secluded, intimate freedom of a human relationship that was genuine and reciprocal in their acceptance of each other's dignity.
When the film turns to the intimate scenes that show the closeness of these young women who comprehend their relationship in a traditional way, by seeing themselves as ‘sister-spouses,’ we begin to understand their affection for each other as the support that is necessary to resist the wrong, antiquated, patriarchal social relations that dominate village society.
It is clear that these are acting conventions that Taiwanese, Hong Kong and mainland audience are familiar with, on account of innumerable films and soap operas that fulfill purposes of entertainment, distraction, and ideological indoctrination.
The anti-naturalist theater author and stage director Bert Brecht, who thought highly of Mei Lanfang, relied on it in his epic theatre.
"[12] The filmmaker, collaborating with Wang Chun-chi, explained it was due to "the way the film treats same-sex romantic love and friendship among women" that it was "taken as a Lesbian story" in the West.
"[14] Marie K. Morohoshi states in an interview that Twin Bracelets, just like another movie she mentions (The East is Red), has "the great gender bender thing going on throughout the film…or a subtext."
"[15] According to Vivian Ng, who resents the fact that "one of the women commit(s) suicide at the end of the story," the film does not present a positive image of lesbians.
Referring specifically to Huang Yu-shan's Twin Bracelets, the French film critic Bérénice Reynaud assumes that her treatment of sexual desire is explained or at least partly influenced by the fact that she is one of those Taiwanese filmmakers who "spent some time abroad.
"[18] The tendency to overemphasis the sexual aspect of liberation was strong in the West because of a Puritan western heritage that has fanned guilt feelings for centuries.
In the context of East Asian societies marked by Confucian patriarchal ideology, it is shame, rather than guilt, that is a typical psychological reaction when boundaries defined by traditional morality are crossed.
Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover put more emphasis on "the oppression experienced by two women" and the fact that they were expected to submit to "arrange marriages.
This aspect is not given sufficient attention by critics who interpret Hui-hua's desperation as an expression of jealousy or the effect of grief experienced by a deserted lover.
But the emotional closeness and the recognition of the resistance both put up against the coarseness and roughly lived-out male dominance of potential marriage partners in the village mattered so much more.
Thus, one author felt that “Twin Bracelets by Huang Yu-Shan […] deals with the impossible price that must be paid as punishment for the transgression of conventional desires.”[21] Apparently ignorant of Chinese socioculture which is not characterized by a Christian defamation of sexuality or haunted by guilt feelings associated with sexual desire, many Western critics typically underestimated the extent to which conflict with traditional customs and disrespect for or rebellion against traditional authority (of governments, superiors, fathers, husbands) is sanctioned.
But a refusal to fulfill conventional expectations to get married and accept the role of a dutiful, obedient wife is clearly something that evokes greater scorn than any revelation of desire.
Feminists like Huang Yu-shan turn against this traditional world view and thus against an ideology that has always evoked the age-old teachings of Confucius while serving to maintain repressive social and political relations that are contemporary.
According to Huang Yu-shan and Wang Chun-chi, “(t)he subject matter of … Twin Bracelets is taken from the tradition of the ‘zishu nü’ (‘the women who comb their hair’ - a term for women who are self-sufficient) in Hui’an, Fujian and its environs...”[22] Lingzhen Wang writes that the film “focuses on Fujian local tradition of female sisterhood” or “female bonding.”[23] This appears to put the accent on a special constellation, rooted in Huidong socioculture.
In 1995 she did further research in Hui’an, staying for “eighteen month in the Huidong village of Shanlin.”[24] While in Shanlin, Friedman showed a particular interest in the kind of group suicide, committed by women, “that inspired … Lu Zhaohuan to pen the short story ‘Shuang zhuo’ (Twin Bracelets) about the relationship between two female(s) ... in a Huidong village.”[25] It is possible that Friedman’s research interest was fanned not only by the story but also by the more widely noted film Twin Bracelets which also culminates in a suicide, though not of two women, but of one woman.
harsh marriage customs) against the loving bonds between two women” who “vow to remain unmarried and live as ‘sister-spouses’ (jiemei fuqi)” but whose choice is finally “defeated by the pressures towards cross-sex marriage.”[26] In view of this interpretation it is not surprising that some writers with ties to Taiwan chose to depict the entire constellation as either exceptional or as an expression of backwardness still found in the People's Republic of China.
"[28] Now it is indeed true that the film portrays coarse behavior and male violence that is informed by a patriarchal sense of being in charge, whereas a woman should know her place and must obey.
But the marriage custom as such, stipulating separate households of husband and wife, gives women an unusual free space and a certain measure of independence.
Instead, she accentuates the harsh facts of everyday relations between man and woman that exist even here and that could have been observed in Taiwan villages or working-class neighborhoods, as well.
What is seemingly distant in terms of time and place, is in fact our own reality subjected to the Brechtian artistic device of making the familiar look strange in order to allow a new scrutiny and discovery of everything that is scandalous with regard to it.
On the contrary, the film's strategy, in this respect, is entirely in line with the paradigm of such writers critical of tradition as Ye Shengtao, Lao She and Lu Xun.