The June Bride

One of Eileen Chang’s best screenplays, June Bride is a fast-paced romantic comedy with a strong female lead, Wang Tanlin (Grace Chang), who has little concern for social convention. Wang Tanlin arrives on an ocean liner from the mainland with the intention of resolving any uncertainty about her prospective marriage to Tung Chifang (Zhang Yang). Suspicions of infidelity, the disappearance of the bride, a greedy father and the groom’s erstwhile mistress all provide stock elements but the handling of the material is contemporary and psychological. A sequence exploring the intoxicated Tanlin’s unconscious fears and desires in a fantastical all-singing, all-dancing dream is a highlight. The excitement of flirtations with a Chinese–Filipino musician (Tian Qing) and sailor (Roy Chiao) is reined in for the 1960s audience when Wang Tanlin says she is looking for something more secure in love and admonishes the sailor, ‘You see too many foreign films’. Yet she will only go through with the wedding to Zhang Yang if all of her fears about his sincerity are allayed.