Tuya's Wedding

In the 2007 Berlinale Golden Bear laureate “Tuya’s Marriage” director Quanan Wang voices a poetic homage to his mother’s native land, where lives are endangered and age-old customs are brought on the verge of disappearance by the rumbling modern world.

In the vast steppes of North-Western Mongolia where the Chinese industry has devoured even the rural areas, the government forces shepherds to give up nomadic life and settle down in cities as farmers.




The Golden Bear, the top award given at Berlin each year, was won this year by Tuya's Wedding, a Chinese film set in the remote high desert of Mongolia. I don't know how many people will see Tuya's Wedding when and if it is ever released in the U.S. I would guess the audiences will be smaller than those who watched the Berlin Festival's biggest public-private moment, widely circulated on the internet. Sharon Stone, nursing a cold, was at the festival for her role in the German-produced film by Ryan Enslinger, When a Man Falls in the Forest. She also hosted a benefit called Cinema for Peace. Perhaps you could write off her behavior to cold medication, but she was caught on camera in a bizarre, surreal moment. First she shushed the audience and then called them “You naughty little Germans. Naughty, nasty little Germans,:” an unscripted monologue not warmly embraced by those present.

Yu Nan, who plays Tuya in Tuya's Wedding is perhaps less glamorous than Sharon Stone, but more stable - she hauls water, rides a mean camel and horse – skills and virtues which Sharon Stone might embrace. In remote Mongolia, Yu Nan plays a hard-working and tough sheep herder with a disabled husband and two kids. This is not a life without problems—water must be carried from far away, and it's obvious Tuya can't manage forever. The one-stop solution seems to be to get a divorce, re-marry, and have the new husband take care of the disabled ex.

Tough, hard-working, pretty women with a sense of humor are hard to find not only in Hollywood but in inner Mongolia as well. The word that Tuya is available spreads quickly and a procession of suitors ensues. Some are genuine losers, but soon the knight in shining armor, who turns out to be Tuya's former classmate, arrives by getting his Mercedes stuck in a rut in the road. Baolier is now a wealthy oil man and with the resources to solve Tuya's problems. The ex-husband is going to a private nursing home, the kids and Tuya with the new husband to the city. Unfortunately if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is, and Baolier turns out to be both selfish and more than a little insensitive in the bedroom. But have heart: the film does have a happy ending.

Director Wang Quan'an dramatizes Tuya's Spartan life, her resilience and her stoicism with a deadpan, positive slant. The film is set in the stunningly beautiful Mongolian mountains—a landscape to which the characters, unlike the audience, never react.

Tuya's Wedding was an odd film to win the top award in Berlin. It's engaging but conventional. It's ethnographically rich but psychologically thin. But even stranger was the jury's award of the Silver Bear, the second prize in Berlin, to the Argentine-French-German feature by Ariel Rotter, El Otro, or The Other. The middle-class main character here is the mysteriously tortured soul of Juan Desouza, a lawyer whose pretty wife is pregnant. On a business trip to a small town to settle a real estate deal, out of nowhere, he assumes the identity of a man who dies sitting next to him on the bus. Juan is clearly running away from and in search of something, but you'd never know what he was looking for watching this movie. At the dead man's funeral, he meets a woman with whom he has anonymous sex in his hotel room just before—equally puzzlingly—he takes the bus back to Buenos Aires. The best thing about El Otro is that it's just 83 minutes, but even this seems an eternity. El Otro, the story of a confused man's search for something is a confused movie that's full of pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness.

The mystique of discovery of anything new and exciting in film was missing in this year's miserable Berlin weather. But then the best German film of last year, which just won the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, was rejected by the Berlin Film Festival last year. The Lives of Others had to claw its way to through the market of the Berlin Film Festival's biggest competitor on the Festival circuit, the Cannes Film Festival.





La jeune Tuya (Yu Nan) vie avec son époux berger et ses deux enfants en Mongolie intérieure, au nord de la Chine. Un environnement d'une beauté sublime et d'une grande exigence envers sa population. Car les conditions de vie dans la steppe ne tolèrent pas de négligence quant aux tâches journalières. Une vérité qui frappe Tuya de manière d'autant plus douloureuse lorsque son mari Bater est immobilisé après un accident. Alors qu'il voulait creuser un puits proche de la maison pour faciliter l'accès à l'eau, élément d'une telle valeur au milieu de ces plaines immenses, Bater s'est blessé à la jambe de manière irrémédiable. Une catastrophe pour la famille et un lourd fardeau pour Tuya, qui se voit maintenant contrainte de subvenir toute seule aux besoins de ses enfants et de son mari infirme. Ramener du foin, garder un immense troupeau de moutons et effectuer trois allers-retours auprès d'une source d'eau lointaine, voilà seulement quelques-unes des corvées qui constituent les journées de travail interminables de la jeune femme.


Pour garder la famille intacte, Tuya et Bater ne voient qu'une solution : Elle doit se trouver un autre mari. Une solution radicale, dont le pragmatisme n'arrive guère à cacher les problèmes. Car d'un côté, les candidats, comme Sen'ge le voisin ivrogne, s'avèrent peu attrayants, et d'un autre, Tuya est toujours amoureuse de son époux, qu'elle compte garder auprès d'elle.


Avec Tuya's Wedding le réalisateur chinois Quanan Wang veut rendre hommage à la terre natale de sa mère et à un mode de vie dont il déplore la disparition en faveur d'une violente expansion industrielle encouragée par l'État. Alors que la fascination du cinéaste pour la Mongolie se ressent dans chaque plan minutieusement mis en scène, la dimension politique intervient de façon beaucoup plus indirecte. Le pèlerinage intense de prétendants auprès de Tuya, témoignant d'une majorité d'hommes, suite aux avortements fréquents de filles dans le cadre de la politique de l'enfant unique mené par la Chine et les pâturages asséchés par la demande en ressources des nouvelles industries, ne sont que quelques indices des dangers qui menacent la culture mongole.
C'est la vie quotidienne qui domine ce long-métrage et qui lui donne son rythme lent. Dans une région où chaque course et chaque transport nécessitent le parcours de distances énormes, la patience et l'endurance sont des qualités nécessaires. Tuya's Wedding n'est pourtant pas un film ennuyeux. Au contraire. Ce monde et ses usages nous sont tellement peu familiers que l'on en savoure chaque détail. Les chants, les habitudes culinaires et les habits traditionnels dont les couleurs intenses symbolisent la joie de vivre inébranlable en plein milieu d'un environnement hostile nous font oublier le temps. L'absence de décor et de personnes finit par purifier tout. Les idées, les relations et l'amour.
Incarnation de la persistance et de la franchise, Tuya accomplira un chemin périlleux avant que ces paysages rudes et impénétrables lui fassent comprendre que l'on ne peut échapper à ses sentiments.

Récompensé avec un Ours d'Or au festival du film de Berlin 2007, Tuya's Wedding est un film qui se focalise sur l'expression par l'image, et par là, sur l'essence même du cinéma. Portée par la talentueuse actrice Ju Nan, qui n'a pas échappée aux regards des producteurs américains et que l'on retrouvera dans un petit rôle de Speedracer des frères Wachowski, cette histoire d'amour dramatique est aussi belle et impitoyable que cette Mongolie qui lui sert de décor.




Mother of two children, strong-minded and beautiful shepherd Tuya refuses to leave her land, opting for taking the responsibility of making a living for the family in the steppes. She also resists her disabled husband Bater’s good-willed insistence for a divorce, which can free Tuya from a part of her burden. One day, after an illness descends upon her, Tuya decides to reconsider the divorce, seriously, at least to be able to find a husband who can look after Bater. However, none of her suitors desire to take on Bater, except Tuya’s old classmate and oil worker, Baolier. Baolier brings Tuya and the children to the city. But Bater, unable to withstand being away from his native land and family, attempts to kill himself. Now it’s time for Tuya to act.