Zero Chou's Spider Lilies explores the relationship between grief and memory -- but poor development and obscure delivery leads to cinematic poison.
I have this horrible habit of loving movies that I don't quite understand -- be it for the theme, the narrative or the characters. I love them when they're in another language, when the relationships are impenetrable, but even more when they involve mystical elements. In this particular case: animated tattoos. I get drawn in by the mystery and chaos, and don't realize, until too late, that the plot doesn't flow, the characters don't develop and tattoos don't move.
Such is the fate of Zero Chou's Spider Lilies. Recounting the tense and tortuous (yet entertaining) lesbian love story of a teenage girl and an older woman, Chou's work centers around the spider lilies tattoo -- namely, its significance and the way it ties the characters together. The spider lilies, yellow and vibrant, have an insidious side and erase memory if ever ingested. Some even claim they are the flowers that line the pathway to hell. The love story begins one day when nine-year-old Jade (Rainie Yang), donning a fluorescent green wig, jumps in front of Takeko (Isabella Leong) in the middle of a road. The film doesn't quite explain the reasons Jade, clearly adept at using her sexuality for attention since a very young age, and Takeko, an older college student, are so drawn to each other, but their innocent flirtations quickly escalate. On the night of a large earthquake that hits Taiwan, they consummate their love affair.
As a result of the horrific earthquake, Takeko loses her father and Jade loses her mother. Takeko finds her younger brother sitting atop the rubble, staring at their father's arm protruding from the debris; his arm is adorned with the spider lilies tattoo. As a result, her brother is permanently emotionally scarred and becomes unable to remember anything before the earthquake. In an attempt to awaken his memories, Takeko tattoos her own arm with the spider lilies tattoo (because therapy costs too much?) and takes the up the vocation of tattoo artist.
The two women do not meet again until years later when Jade -- who now supports herself by performing online "peep-shows" for paying customers -- decides she wants a tattoo. Of course, she happens to stumble upon Takeko's tattoo parlor. And what does Jade want on her beautiful nubile body? Nothing but the spider lilies tattoo, which we see on the framed on the wall. In line with the deranged quality of the film, we later learn that Takeko cut off the skin of her father to save the tattoo.
Unfortunately, the characters of Takeko and Jade never fully develop throughout the movie. Takeko remains her reclusive, skittish self, and it's not until Jade asks for the tattoo that Takeko begin to explore the memories around the tattoo and what it means to her now. Similarly, Jade remains in her own version of Memoirs of a Cyber-Porn Geisha, staying in her nine-year-old mindset as she constantly looks for attention from Takeko (as well as other horny middle-aged men). Their relationship fails to grow, but remains in an awkward adolescent stage where both continually flirt and pull away -- a relationship based more on lust than on love.
The only character whose portrayal was meaningful to me is that of Takeko's brother (John Shen). His character embodies the idea of memory that Chou is attempting to foreground. The movie essentially capitalizes on the notion of memories impacting our current relationships. While Jade and Takeko are busy tying to flirt, they refuse to articulate their feelings for each other as well as their feelings about the loss of their parents from the earthquake. Takeko's brother, however, distances himself from these characters and, instead, forces himself to forget everything as a way to deal with his grief. It is not until a pivotal scene where he eats the spider lillies -- the only memory he carries of his father -- that his memory return. In this way, Chou suggests that we each have to face our own (poisonous) pasts and memories in order to fully move forward.
After facing his spider lilies, he lies comatose until the last scene of the movie where his eyes open, a small smile appears, and viewers are led to believe he remembers. Memories are powerful; they mold our personalities and influence our perspectives to the point where they can destroy our current relationships. While Takeko's brother was not able to develop a relationship until he dealt with his loss, Jade and Takeko, without dealing with their pain, weave a web of drama and confusion that blurs their relationship. The film underscores the fact that they do not reach closure from their losses, as Takeko's brother is able to.
Another character of note who becomes especially entertaining -- and saves the movie on some level -- is Takeko's tattoo parlor sidekick, who believes that tattoos on his arms give him power and ferocity. After an especially long day of having skulls tattooed on his forearms, he picks a fight, only to be awoken and realize he has no arms. During a hallucination Takeko has when she can't find her brother, the character returns, yelling in the fields: "The tattoos don't work!" It is here that the spider lilies tattoo becomes an anime creation and flutters about the screen in a beautiful, melodic scene.
In Chou's film, spider lilies line the pathway to a different kind of hell -- not eternal hell, but cinematic hell. His theme, once understood, is a powerful one, yet Chou doesn't develop characters well enough or give them enough of a background for viewers to understand how their stories more deeply impact each other. This hell to which he leads us is one where painful and unresolved lesbian tensions linger, amnesic brothers lay comatose and armless tattoo-artist-sidekicks flail their stumps.