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Sometimes the most radical and progressive of ideas can crop up and get navigated in the most traditional of bastions. That too without much hullabaloo; quietly and softly. Wancheng Gu and Prasad Shetty’s documentary, The Wolf, showcases one such trailblazing individual, Yuan, the former mayor of Shanghai, and her unorthodox marriage with Zhang, that defies the foundational rules of holy matrimony, but without the partners losing mutual love, admiration and respect and lifelong commitment to each other. Yuan, nicknamed The Wolf, embraced her queerness significantly late in life, despite being aware, even in her teens and youth, of her attraction towards women rather than men. The film follows her through the course of one year, from the winter of 2023 to the autumn of 2024, during which she goes through shifts in her love life with the young Zhen Zhen and faces economic turbulence in business, all with equanimity and maturity.
The context for her remarkable journey in life is set at the very beginning with the intertitle that explains how homosexuality was removed from the category of mental illnesses in China in 2001, and since then a 3 No’s policy is practiced when it comes to the LGBTQIA population—the one of no approval, no disapproval, and no promotion. It’s in such a buttoned-down scenario that she unshackled herself without any fuss or furor. The film opens with a karaoke party sequence in which Zhen Zhen talks about the happiness Yuan brings her, the age gap notwithstanding. She loves that she cooks for her and shows her off to her friends. There is a niggling fear, though, of meeting Zhang at the marriage of their daughter. The wedding, the customs, the red envelopes with money for the couple and the wishes that the newlywed may have children soon feel eminently “Indian”. It’s in such a scenario that Yuan too had to say yes to marriage and even had a kid, but age gave her the courage to be herself. “I had to live for myself rather than be controlled by others,” she says. What helped along the way, oddly, was the Internet and the online queer communities. The solidarity that gave many the strength to come out.
The character-driven documentary is a winner by virtue of the fascinating person that it is about. What adds to the audience interest is the enormous access Yuan gives to the filmmakers. Shot entirely on iPhone, the camera is the quiet observer, the fly on the wall witness, the intimate confidante constantly trailing and recording each of her moves. There is much to admire in Yuan. The instinctive feminism (she was one of very few female mayors in China), the inability to stay idle after retirement, the immense gravitas, sense and sensibility, offset nicely by Zhen Zhen’s vivacity and spontaneity. Yet there are contradictions, like her irrational belief in rolling gold foils for money. One unwittingly comic scene has her packing loads of these gold foil-filled bags in the elevator. There’s the instinct to not stir the pot. What’s the point in telling her aging parents about herself because lesbianism is a concept they wouldn’t anyhow understand. To me it’s Zhang who comes across as much of a hero in the strange arrangements of life as Yuan. He found out about her sexual orientation in October 2006, and while she was ready to walk away without demanding anything from him, he refused to let her go: “I can’t find anybody as good as you”. In turn, she respects him for his “masculine grace” and calls him her “lifelong commitment”. “My life is almost perfect,” she says, accepting heartbreak and leaving the rest to fate.
The film that rises above our long-held ideas about relationships also transcends borders. A French-Indian co-production with Kabir Khan as one of the producers and Kiran Rao as an executive producer, it is a China story that has come out of a partnership between a Chinese and an Indian filmmaker and had its world premiere at the Sheffield Docfest in the UK. A cinematic example of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
Namrata Joshi
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