THE PAIN OF PURITY   Abuse and Collusion in Vivian Qu’s Angels Wear White

‘I don’t want to be reborn as a woman. Not all over again.’

In Angels Wear White (2017), by Chinese writer/director Vivian Qu, receptionist Lily (Peng Jing) says this line between gasping sobs, keeling over in obvious agony. She is in a dingy hotel room after having her hymen surgically reconstructed; the pain that rips through her body is not just physical. A woman is taught that the biologically female body will tear at the point of first penetration – that the sharp pain of ‘virginity loss’ is a rite of passage, an inevitable part of sex. A woman is also taught that it is her responsibility to keep her virginity – and her vagina, if she has one – cloistered until marriage. This unmarried woman’s mutilated body is her throbbing shame to bear, and her problem to fix.

Qu cut her teeth in the film world as a producer, working with independent filmmakers including Diao Yinan (Night Train, 2007; Black Coal, Thin Ice, 2014) and Yin Lichuan (Knitting, 2008), before making her directorial debut with 2013’s Trap Street. Her sophomore feature, Angels Wear White, is an elegant daylight noir that moves between the parallel stories of two young girls in a sleepy seaside town in southern China. Xiaomi (Vicky Chen), or ‘Mia’ as she is frequently referred to in the film, is an adolescent hotel clerk without a government-issued Resident Identity Card. While working the front desk, she witnesses the beginnings of an assault unfolding on the hotel’s CCTV. While she