Portrait of a lust cause: Red Rose, White Rose by Zuni Icosahedron
The more that Mathias Woo Yan-wai digs into Eileen Chang Ai-ling's novel Red Rose, White Rose, the more he realises it is not the simple love story he thought it was when he read it as a teenager.
RED ROSE, WHITE ROSE
Zuni Icosahedron
The more that Mathias Woo Yan-wai digs into Eileen Chang Ai-ling's novel Red Rose, White Rose, the more he realises it is not the simple love story he thought it was when he read it as a teenager.
Revolving around the feckless Tong Zhenbao and his two lovers — his submissive wife White Rose, and his zealous married mistress Red Rose — the story focuses on the conventional Chinese concept of love, and is laden with underlying sexual implications.
"In Chinese society — and in this novel — sex is a power struggle. It's stereotypical that the man seeks to follow his sexual desires, and women do not, they simply play a subordinate role in a male-driven world," says Woo.
"In the Western world, Freud debunked a lot of these ideas. His psychoanalysis says all our behaviour evolves from our sexual drive. If we understand everyone's sexual drive, and their desires, we can find a remedy, or path to improve ourselves. Sex is at the core of every human relationship, but there are still a lot of hang-ups about it in Chinese society."
Woo has weaved Canto-pop and Mando-pop songs from different eras into his adaptation. This reflects the sentiments of the protagonists, he says.