11/02/2014 - The Chinese-French co-production in the competition suggests that disability is a matter of choice

One of the most moving films in this year’s competition, Blind Massage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] focuses on a massage parlour in a Chinese city. All the masseurs are blind, and director Lou Ye welcomes the audience into their world with the help of DoP Zeng Jian’s hesitating camera, the best way to be introduced to the slow, but extremely touching, lives of the protagonists.

Blind Massage does not beg for the audience’s pity; quite the contrary, actually. While one gets to know the characters, played by an impressive ensemble of actors (a mix of blind amateurs and professional actors), one understands that while they regret being blind, their situation does not stop them from living their lives as cheerfully as anyone else. The film is not about an overwhelming disability, but about love and lust, greed and sacrifice, rebellion and ambition, beauty and rejection. It doesn’t stress what makes blind and sighted people different, but rather what makes them similar. 

“No woman is blind to true love,” says Du Hong (Mei Ting), one of the parlour’s masseuses, praised by all the sighted clients for her extraordinary beauty. But in the world of the blind, beauty doesn’t mean perfect aesthetic features, but perhaps a deep, soothing voice, velvety skin or a good sense of humour. The laws of attraction differ, and sometimes rejections stem from surprising reasons, but the bottom line is that if anything is blind in Lou Ye’s film, it is love.

Although sometimes the characters’ reactions are somewhat implausible, Blind Massage is an interesting ode to love and moving on. With the help of inspired music, sound effects and camera work, the director succeeds in building a compassionate bridge between the world of the sighted – who, according to the screenplay, “hide in the dark” – and the world of the blind.