The Research on the Representational Strategies of Femme Fatale in Contemporary Chinese Film-noir

Abstract

In 2014, Chinese director Diao Yinan’s feature Black Coal, Thin Ice wins the Golden Bear Award for Best Director at the 64th Berlin Film Festival, sparking enthusiastic discussion on the prospect of the so-called 'Chinese film-noir'. Among the classic noir elements that sparked discussion in these films, the lethal woman, or the ‘femme fatale’ stands out to be the one that attracts the most attention. In the span of a decade, the Chinese femme fatale varies quite enormously in her role in the narrative and the gender implication her relationship with the noir hero represents. This essay will build on Mark Conrad’s definition of film-noir, Jack Boozer’s categorization of femme fatale, and Elisabeth Bronfen’s tragic theory to analyze the construction of femme fatale in 2010s Chinese film noir. Equipped with these theoretical tools, this essay will focus on recent Chinese films-noirs and draw connections between their different representational strategy of the femme fatale to complete their noir narrative. This essay argues that while films like the Hunt Down (2019) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) approaches the lethal woman in the classic androcentric or even misogynist way, Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) and the Wild Goose Lake (2019) endows her with more subjectivity and agency while complicating her relationship with the noir hero.