Anthropological Inventories
By Leonardo Mecchi

Tuya's Marriage (Tuya de hun shi, China) is a film made in two layers. In the foreground, we have the story of Tuya, a young Mongol woman, mother of two children, who passes through hard times to be able to take care of her family and keep it united. In the background, we have the picture of a vanishing community (the Mongolian nomads), a culture on the verge of disappearing due to the demands of contemporary life and the impositions of the Chinese government.

As a portrait of this community, Tuya's Marriage relates to works like Mongolian Ping Pong (Lu cao di, China) and The Story Of The Weeping Camel (Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel, Germany/Mongolia), but in a less exotic and idyllic way and closer to the everyday life of this family. It is as if Wang Quan'an wanted with his film — and through this microcosm of Tuya's family — to preserve for posterity the way of life of all Mongolian people. The film is almost an anthropological inventory of the habits and the culture of this vanishing community.

The difficulty these characters are facing trying to adapt themselves to modern life becomes very clear throughout. That's why they try to supplant their pain with drinking and even with suicide. The queue of Tuya's suitors seems to indicate this inexorable advance of modernity on that family, with the transport means evolving at each visit (going from horses to motorcycles and, finally, to cars).

Even the presence of a television set at the moment of Tuya's husband suicide attempt and the desire of her neighbor to buy a little truck (as his wife's love for him seems to be conditioned by his possessions) demonstrates these cultural changes that overcome the Mongols. The symbolism is somehow similar to the one found in the small ping-pong ball of Mongolian Ping Pong.

All these questions appear and are developed through Tuya and her relationships: with her children, her debilitated husband, the neighbour who nourishes a secret passion for her, the new suitors who look after her and, finally, with her daily tasks. It is in the identification of the spectator with this character (and, through her, with the whole Mongol culture), that the film makes its bets — and there lies its main weakness.

Although Yu Nan does a good job as the film's protagonist, there is little space in the script for this identification to blossom, as it almost does in scenes like the one where Tuya and her children go to visit father in the hospital or when she goes looking for her oldest son in the middle of a blizzard.

Tuya's cry at the end of the film does not overwhelm us more than it did at the beginning of the projection. At the end, we are no more touched or involved with the character then we were the first time we saw it on the screen. We feel sorry for her, that's true, but we do not share her pain, and so what seemed to be one of Wang Quan'an's main intentions with his film is ruined.

Leonardo Mecchi

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