Unveiling the Impact of Female Characters in Asian Chinese Women's Cinema

Abstract

This study examines the impact of female characters in Chinese women’s cinema, and explores which female character and which ending of the film is more appreciated by audiences. The concepts of Chinese women cinema, female character, media appreciation, open ending, looped ending and closed ending are conducted. A qualitative, semi-structured interviewed is adopted to understand the knowledge of twelve participants towards female character and ending plots of five movies, "Siao Yu" (1998), "The Sent-Down Girl" (1998), "Sister" (2021), "Send Me to the Clouds" (2017) and “Spring Tide” (2019). It concludes that audiences are more appreciative of independent female character, happy closed ending is more likely to be appreciated by audience, tragic looped ending is less likely to be appreciated by audiences, and appreciation of open endings is influenced by the audience's values.