White Snake (2021)

White Snake (2021) Aka: The White Snake: A Love Affair Chinese Title: 白蛇：情劫 Translation: White Snake: Love Robbery

Starring: He Hua, Wen Yi-Fan, Yu Li, Xu Ning, Xu Shaohong

Director: Liu Chun

Action Director: Ge Shuai

Of all the films I’ve seen on the topic in the past month, the 2021 iQiyi film White Snake is arguably the most unique in terms of its storyline. It diverges the most from the original plotline, although it has a pretty good reason for doing so, which I will mention in a bit. I mean, the general story beats are the same, but there are some noticeable differences, mainly in terms of who the main antagonist is.

We open with Demon Hunter Brigade operating in the city of Jiangnan. They are chasing what they think may be a snake demon, but it turns out to be a Centipede demon instead. As these things go, the demon initially looks like a beautiful woman, but then transforms into a 20-foot-high monster. Only the combined efforts of Demon Hunter Brigade and a Taoist exorcist by the name of Meng Hai (Xu Shaohong, I think) are able to defeat the monster.

From this encounter (and a couple of scenes shortly afterward), we learn that the Demon Hunter Brigade is operating like a sort of Gestapo in the province. They are given free reign by the local magistrates, who are either deathly afraid of them or bewitched by them. Yes, this will be theme. Meng Hai is suspicious of them, but that will have to wait.

We meet our resident White Snake, Lady Bai (He Hua), who has been cultivating her qi for 900 years and is now able to transform into a human woman. Her little sister, Qing (Yu Li), is still not strong enough to maintain a human form for an extended period of time. The gods in heaven have said that if she goes to the human realm to experience (and presumably overcome) “mortal coils,” she will be granted sagehood and immortality. Her first attempt to become human is unsuccessful, and she is found lying on a rock in her snake form by a young doctor names Xu Xian (Wen Yi-Fan). He tries to nurse her back to health, some scares from Qing notwithstanding.

Anyway, Lady Bai resumes her human form and heads to Jiangnan where Xu Xian lives and practices medicine. They meet and hit it off and are quickly summoned to the house of young Master Gao (Xu Ning), one of Xu Xian’s colleagues and a disciple of Meng Hai. Gao’s father is dying and Xu Xian is the most talented doctor at the local clinic. It is with Lady Bai’s (telepathic) assistance that he places the acupuncture needle in the right meridian, freeing up the old man’s energy and saving his life.

Later on, both Xu Xian and Lady Bai are invited to the Gao residence for a banquet in their honor. Young master Gao tries to have them married on the spot, although Meng Hai shows up and spoils the party by accusing her of being a snake from the outset. Meng Hai is on her trail because of a series of murders committed in town that have been attributed to a snake spirit, but we know better. Lady Bai drops enough hints—disappearing into thin air, miraculously curing his blind grandmother, etc—that it doesn’t take too long for him to figure out her secret.

After she is injured in a battle with the Demon Hunter Brigade, Xu Xian arrives at the conclusion that he loves her. He even declares her to be his wife while talking to a local boatman. Unfortunately, that boatman turns out to be Meng Hai in disguise. A magical battle erupts and Xu Xian decides to swear off his love in order to save her life. He promises to become a disciple of Meng Hai, although he sticks to his guns about not thinking all demons (or spirits) are evil.

Shortly afterward, the Demon Hunter Brigade attack the clinic where Xu Xian works and slaughter all of the doctors looking for Xu. Xu tells Gao where the snake sisters reside and asks him to warn them about the pending arrival of the Brigade. But it turns out that Gao is a turncoat and is working for the Brigade, whose leader is a demon himself and wants Lady Bai’s “Millenial Orb,” which is how she and her sister can live so long.

So the big twist—and SPOILER alert to anybody interested in watching this—becomes apparent if you have seen enough adaptations of the material and have read Paragraph 4 of this review. In all other versions of the tale, it is said that she is a 1000-year-old serpent. But here, she is only 900 years old. Was it a math error? No. In this adaptation, the big twist is that it is set 100 years before the events of the legend we all know and love. So, whatever the end of the film is, it will ultimately lead into Lady Bai pursuing Xu Xian again in the next life (which is the final scene of the film). End of SPOILER.

The movie introduces a new set of villains in the form of the Demon Hunter Brigade, which we suspect early on and then can confirm are mostly demons themselves (but the evil sort). Their leader is after immortality and is willing to slay as many demons as possible to that end, or frame the White Snake for a myriad of killings in order to ferret her out into public. They have all sorts of magical weapons and attacks, although the story has so much going on that none of it gets explained very well.

That is a problem with the film. Like an early 1990s wuxia film, there is enough happening and enough characters with different motivations and end games that 90 minutes isn’t enough time to adequately tell the story. Some elements just seem to pop out of nowhere, indicating that either entire scenes were left on the editing floor or just were not filmed and the editors screwed up royally. For example, the scene where Lady Bai returns Xu Xian’s umbrella, but it was never preceded by any scene suggesting that he had lent it to her in the first place. Near the end, Qing the Green Snake fakes joining forces with the Demon Hunter Brigade in order to buy time for her sister. She leaves and returns almost immediately to free her sister, talking about selling her body to the demon hunters in order to steal their Soul-Breaking Spear. But we never see any of that or anything that hints at it. I’m guessing a scene was cut.

Another flaw is that actress He Hua has simply got nothing on Joey Wong at her prime or Eva Huang at any time. Joey was one of the sexiest demons to walk this earth in Green Snake and Eva was comely and fetching and all that jazz. He Hua isn’t any of that. She’s mildly cute, but she brings no sensuality, seductiveness, or magnetism to her role. I mean, even Brigitte Lin is…well…she’s Brigitte Lin. She needs no introduction. Hu Hua is simply “fair-skinned Chinese pop idol-esque type with no real personality of her own.” Yu Li does an alright job as the more mistrusting Qing, but she too pales—heh… “pale” and White snake—in comparison with Maggie Cheung (nobody will beat the raw eroticism of Maggie’s performance) and even Charlene Choi (whose flirty-cum-cynical turn as Qing I actually liked).

The action is staged by Ge Shuai, who appeared to be a member of Yu Song’s stunt team. In the past few years, he has worked on films like Huang Miao Village’s Tales of Mystery; Maoshan Uncle; Zombies in the Old Temple; and Mountain Guardians. Those films feature a one-eyebrow Taoist priest in the lead role and at least one of them has Billy Lau in the credits, which leads me assume that they are all part of a Mainland Chinese reboot of the Mr. Vampire series. That said, I have not seen of Ge Shuai’s work to be able to critique his style.

Not that he has much to do here. Lots of wires and wooshing and random sword swinging, but not a lot of real choreography on display. Characters wield spears and snake daggers (the ones with the undulating blades) and whips that appear to be made from snake vertebrae, but there isn’t much hard choreography in the film. Just a lot of fantasy action with the occasional appearance of a snake tail whacking people or a giant white snake (which actually works better here than in Sorcerer and the White Snake because it doesn’t suffer from budgetary overreach).

It's flawed and a little bland, but never offensive. It offers a few twists on the material, but it needed either better action or more sensuality from the female characters. But that may be a Mainland censorship thing that causes their female characters to be all vanilla like a Disney princess film.