Review of Tuya's Marriage

Unlike the two faux documentaries which people now associate with Mongolian films, TUYA'S MARRIAGE is a well-acted, intricate and layered story about a strong young woman trying to hold her life together. Very like Gong Li in THE STORY OF QIU JU, Yu Nan plays Tuya, a stubborn and beautiful woman faced with an impossible predicament who must find her way through an onslaught of well-meaning (mostly) but ineffectual men to keep her family together. Tuya's affection for and loyalties to her disabled husband Bater are put to the test when she is forced to find a new husband in order to survive. All along the "obvious" choice, Shenge, her foolish but adorable neighbor, keeps trying to be the hero but falling on his face. Tuya must keep saving the men in her life from near disaster: Bater, Shenge (twice), and even her young son. The film becomes the romance/triangle of one woman and two men - much like JULES AND JIM or even FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (co-written by Wei Lu, who also co-wrote TUYA'S MARRIAGE). At the end of the film, her marriage includes both men, but immediately we see that she must continue saving them from themselves - and keeping everything and everybody together.