Girl from Hunan on AllMovie

The title character, played by Na Renhua, is the reluctant 12-year-old bride in an arranged marriage with a two-year-old boy. Expected to tow the line so far as social proprieties are concerned, Renhua rebels against the edicts of her elders. Her headstrong attitude becomes most pronounced when, at 16, she falls in love with another man. Though set in turn-of-the-century China, the cultural clashes prevalent in The Girl From Hunan deliberately parallel the state of affairs in the China of the late 1980s. Filmed in the Cantonese language, The Girl From Hunan vividly recreates an era long gone, yet somehow still very close.