Blind Mountain (Mang Shan) 2007

Bai Xuemei (Beijing Film Academy student Huang Lu) is a pretty graduate who is promised a good job working as a salesman for a medical company. Her new employers take her into the mountains, ostensibly to buy medicinal herbs; here, Xuemei is drugged, and wakes up to find that she has been sold to a peasant family as a wife for their truculent son. Beaten, chained and raped by her new "husband" (with the help of his parents), the spirited Xuemei is forced to bide her time in this remote village, which is miles from the nearest town.

Director: Yang Li

Stars: Huang Lu, Youan Yang, Yunle He

JDramaMama's Rating: B-

As a woman, this was a hard film to watch. Based on a true story, a pretty young college student is tricked into believing she is going to get a job and ends up a prisoner to a boorish, violent, peasant farmer and his family. China's "one child" rule (that one child preferably being a son), and the fact that many young Chinese women have rejected the idea of marriage with dependency on a husband, has left many rural men without wives. The harsh life this young woman is forced to endure is heartbreaking. Particularly disturbing was when she was held down by her "husband's mother while he raped her because she had to give him a son. No, not my idea of a fun thing to watch! Brutal, cruel and ignorant, he makes her life a living hell, working her like a slave and keeping her isolated from the outside world. When she can't take it any longer, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

#China #drama #suspense #violence