Spider Lilies (刺青) – Behind Every Tattoo, There Is A Secret
Taiwanese film, Spider Lilies (刺青), won the Teddy Award1 at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival2 Starring Rainie Yang3 and Isabella Leong, the film tells a heart wrenching tale of 2 lesbians and the significance of tattooing. Directed by Zero Chou, Spider Lilies was aired in the cinemas of some countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2007.
Takeko (Stars Isabella Leong) is a skilled tattooist with an arm tattooed with Spider Lilies. Why the Spider Lilies on her arm? Nobody, except for a few, knows the reason for that and she’s bent on keeping it a secret for as long as possible. Bearing the responsibility of caring for her younger brother who was traumatized by an earthquake incident that had happened years back, she spends her time in her tattoo shop designing custom made tattoos for customers. When she met Jade (Stars Rainie Yang), her emotions wavered and her past returns to haunt her. The current Jade is a web-cam girl who does sexy poses for customers as long as they pay her. Running out of tricks, she decides to get a tattoo to spice up the sexiness of her online business, thus, their paths cross again.
The film deals with the complexity of human relations where the decisions of one’s past can affect the decisions of one’s present. There are priorities in life, decisions are made, and characters either move on or try to remedy what they have done wrong in life. This is perhaps the gist of Takeko and Jade’s relation in this flick; if one is given the chance to make a choice again when faced with almost similar circumstances like before, what will it be?
Defying conventions, the film provides an alternate perspective towards certain prevalent societal issues like tattooing and cyber-sex where they are often stereotypically attached with negative qualities. For example, those with tattoos are often tagged as gangsters or trouble makers and girls who engage in cyber-sex are perceived as money sucking succubus with no moral. However, their reasons for doing so are left out. Why get a tattoo? Why engage in cyber-sex? Their perspectives are not shown and this film attempts to show from their perspectives.
Running on a non-linear plot, expect scene skips from the present to the past, and then back to the present. One might think that it might be confusing with all the scene skips and flashbacks but let me assure you that it’s not. Everything, except for the ambiguous ending that is open for interpretation, will fall into place neatly towards the end.
Both Jade and Takeko are persistent characters in their own way. Jade is determined to push on and to continue from the past while Takeko is determined to hide and forget the past and to move on. Takeko even goes to the extent to hide her tattoo with her sleeve attire and pretends to not know Jade at a point in the film. Jade, however, is determined to pursue her love interest and gives Takeko the push. In a way, the film has nicely conjured a love story that involves tattoo.
There are 2 supporting characters who will effectively portray the alternate perspectives and they are connected to either Jade or Takeko. One is A Dong, a friendly and likable character though he is a gangster who extorts money from high school students. Originally an introvert, A Dong believes strongly that tattooing can bring out one’s strength and becomes more confident with every tattoo he gets. The other character is junior police officer Da Yu, who works on the cyber-sex case. He not only investigates the case, he tries to understand and convince Jade to quit. Partly through the perspectives of both A Dong and Da Yu, the underlying problems are raised and explored.
Actually I was stunned by the opening where Rainie Yang did a sexy dance because I always have an impression of her as cute rather than sexy from the many Taiwanese drama that she has starred in). Generally, Jade’s emotions (angst and sorrow especially) are well portrayed while Isabella did a perfect job as the quiet and reserved Takeko. The kiss/sex scenes are artistically done without compromising the actresses in any way and the kiss scenes are especially hot but they are only available in the DVD “deleted scenes segment” as they were excluded from the movie. For more information on the movie, feel free to visit the official site.
Cool. I’ll go watch the opening scene just to see Rainie Yang’s sexy dance.
Then you just need to catch the first 2 minutes of the film.
the movie was kinda bad from reviews. the steaming scenes aren’t interesting either. i heard that the director is a lesbian as well.
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There’s no steaming scenes in the movie unless you watch the deleted scenes segment. I feel that the way of filming is how should I say it…very “Taiwan-styled”. It’ll require some time to appreciate, if not, “tolerate” the film since there are cultural motifs that foreign viewers might not get. (Example: Think locally produced films like I Not Stupid and Money No Enough that foreigners might have problems grasping)