A Flower in the Raining Night is a 1983 Taiwanese film directed by Wang Toon. Adapted from the novel, Days of Watching the Sea written by Huang Chun Ming, the film portrays the journey of a prostitute who is determined to become a mother to regain her dignity as a human being. It is one of the few commercially successful films of the New Taiwan Cinema in the 1980s, in which its box office reached TWD$23,000,000,^[1] HKD$2,536,132.00^[2] and was nominated for Best Narrative Feature in the 20th Golden Horse Awards.^[3]

Plot

The female lead Bai Mei (白梅, played by Lu Hsiao-Fen 陸小芬) was an adopted girl in a poor family at Jiufen (九份). She was sold to a private brothel at Zhongli (中壢)  to be a prostitute by her father when she was still young. She later worked at Nanfangao (南方澳), a fishing port at northern Taiwan in the harvesting season. On the train back to Jiufen for her father’s funeral she was insulted by a rude male, who was once her customer. Bai Mei was happy to meet her best friend in the brothels Ying Ying (鶯鶯, played by Su Mingming 蘇明明), who was lucky enough to get out of prostitution early and be married to a considerate major. Bai Mei had a wonderful time with Ying Ying’s baby on the ride.

The accidental encounter with Ying Ying also brought back memories of their miserable life as prostitutes. Because of her social status, Bai Mei was shunned by the younger brothers and sisters she helped raise with her blood money. Her sister-in-law did not even let her hold her son. Disappointed and heart-broken, Bai Mei was determined to cut off from the foster home and have a baby of her own on the train back to Nanfangao, believing that she could become a "normal person" by becoming a mother. She let a kind and honest fisherman (played by Ma Ju Feng馬如風) to impregnate her and then said goodbye to the brothel and her life as a prostitute the next day. She returned to her family of origin at Kengdi (坑底), where villagers grew sweet potatoes to barely make a living.

Bai Mei found herself pregnant as planned. She helped pay for her elder brother's leg amputation and saved his life. Thanks to her suggestion to control the provision of sweet potatoes in the market, villagers could sell their harvest for a better price. Bai Mei won the respect of the villagers despite her ignoble past. After a long and difficult labor, she gave birth to a son and finally became a mother with her own child.

Cast

Production

Some scenes of A Flower in the Raining Night were shot at Yilan (Shuang-lian-pi),^[5] Jiufen, Hualien and Jinshan. In one of his interviews,^[6] Wang Toon mentioned that it is the intimate relationship between people and the ocean that made him choose Hualien and Jinshan as the shooting locations for this film.

The set design of private brothels in the film was based on those at Baodou Village (寶斗里) in Taipei, Huang Chun-ming complained about the brothels in the film being much more spacious than those in reality. Wang Toon defended his portrayal by pointing out the practical need of filmmaking.^[7]

Wang Toon graduated from the National Taiwan College of Arts, majoring in fine arts and worked as an art director for many movies before making his first film, If I Were for Real in 1981. As the art director of this film, he tried to use the contrast of light and shadow to represent the different emotions of Bai Mei, especially in the sex scene in which Bai Mei hopes to be impregnated by the fisherman Wu Tiantu.

It is noted that Wang Toon also made use of windows in some key shots to represent the inner emotions of Bai Mei,^[6] such as the different stages of Bai Mei’s life from oppression to the new life.^[8]

The scene in which Bai Mei breastfed her child was cut because of film censorship at that time in Taiwan, despite Wang Toon’s explanation that the scene is necessary for the film to show Bai Mei’s motherhood.

Moreover, Taiwanese characters in the film have to speak Mandarin even when they are conversing with each other because of the language policy of Taiwan during the martial law. Wang Toon asked most of the actors and actresses to dub their own characters except Lu Hsiao-fen, whose voice was not that good on screen according to Wang Toon.

When asked if he had a chance to modify A Flower in the Raining Night, what he would like to change the most? Wang Toon said that he would reshoot the film in Taiwanese.^[9]

A Flower in the Raining Night was the second best-selling Taiwanese film of the year of 1983, second to Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing?  It grossed TWD$23,000,000.00 in Taiwan and HK$2,536,132.00 Hong Kong.

Awards

Lu Hsiao-Fen is the winner of Best Leading Actress and Ying Ying the winner of Best Supporting Actress of the 20th Golden Horse Awards. The film was also nominated for Best Narrative Feature, and Huang Chun Ming for Best Adapted Screenplay.

References