The Teeth of Love

Love hurts; life is full of anguish. THE TEETH OF LOVE is a chronicle of one woman's life set against post-Revolutionary societal change. In the bleak Beijing of the late 1970s, Qian Yiehong is a schoolgirl who leads a tough gang. Her ruthless taunting of a boy who loves her results in violence that will affect her always. Yiehong leaves her school days behind to study medicine, where she falls in with a married man. Their relationship ends in the excruciating pain of a self-induced abortion, and Yiehong is forced to quit her position and return home. Relegated to working as a butcher, she is introduced to a nice bland fellow, with whom she settles into a tedious, yet tense, existence. When she becomes unable to bear it any longer, she finally seeks out the pain she associates with love. Luminous actress Yan Bingyan exudes an infuriating aloofness in the face of torment that makes us understand why three men would endure humiliation to be with her. Director Zhuang Yuxin is a devotee of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, and it shows. His film resembles Bergman's work in the languor of its pacing and its exploration of the fragility of women's psyches. (In Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles) – BB