Withered in the Blooming Season 2005 《少年花草黄》

Cui Zi’en is a Chinese director whose films tackle the taboo and the shocking areas of life. But while his other films merely discuss how a taboo can affect a person, his family, and his relationship with other people (which is the case for his film “My Fair Son”), some of his films delve deeper into the darker recesses of one’s life and psyche. This is better with what happens in Withered in the Blooming Season, one of Cui Zi’en more riveting and more controversial films.

Withered in the Blooming Season is about Feng, a gay teenage guy who has an unusual fixation with his twin sister, Wen. The two are very close to each other. They stay in the same room and they pretty much live parallel lives. This, for Feng, serves as their connection, a relationship that no other people can take away. At first, Wen resists his brother’s closeness (she even rejected her brother the first time he insisted on sleeping with her in the same room). But later on, they became too close for comfort. This relationship blossomed into some more unearthly, the fruit of Feng’s obsession. The two siblings are quite young. Feng,  knows that he is a homosexual, but his connection with his sister keeps him riveted.

But Feng could not sustain his hold on his sister for so long. Wen is growing and maturing faster than Feng, and she is gaining a life outside the life of her own brother. Even when Feng found out that Wen is pregnant with his child, Feng feels that their relationship is not and could not be what it was. Because of this, Feng made his best friend, who is also a homosexual, have a relationship with his sister. He felt that he could use his best friend to control Wen and to become a part of his sister’s life.

Of course, this only complicates things, as Feng’s best friend only made the unholy union of the siblings into a more complicated love triangle of sorts – between a brother and a sister and the guy who made them realize how screwed up their lives are.

Although Withered in the Blooming Season sounds absurd and unrealistic, Cui Zi’en turns everything into a realistic and riveting story of troubled and damaged individuals who only want to find their place in the world. As with most of the creations of Cui Zi’en, Withered in the Blooming Season dares the viewers to take a good look into the lives of people with repressed emotions and damaged lives. What the film shows is not at all a representative of the lives of the people in China. However, the emotion and everything else that is shown in the film is very accurate. It is a poignant exploration into the lives of the troubled and the repressed.

Film Details

Release Date: 2005
Language: Mandarin
Director: Cui Zi’en
Main Cast: Jiao Xianqwen, Wang Guifeng, Ren’an, Wang Le