作為香港新浪潮的旗手之一，許鞍華從第一部劇情長片《瘋劫》(1979)開始，在香港電影工業耕耘三十多年並累積約二十六部電影創作，其創新的風格與主題為當時疲軟無力的香港電影界注入一股活力。從香港電視廣播有限公司（Television Broadcasts Limited 簡稱：TVB )的創作開始，即可一見作品與香港社會的緊密關係與互動，更不乏取材自香港真實社會的事件與觀察，並在之後的劇情長片裡的故事做更完整的發展，使她的電影獲得「香港社會良心的作品」的美譽(張健德,150)。然而，在現存研究許鞍華電影的論述中卻少見深刻而完整的研究，其研究莫可分成兩派，一派討論許鞍華在《女人四十》(1995)之前的電影作品，皆可見到其尋找身分認同的母題； 另一派則討論《女人四十）之後的作品,此派認為許鞍華從《女人四十》開始，大量使用女性角色，並聚焦許鞍華對女性是否有自我主體性（subjectivity）等性別議題之探討。然而，本篇論文則嘗試著回應以上的討論，認為許鞍華的電影應該超脫各自探討身分認同與女性議題的範疇，因而有著人文主義之關懷。
因此，本論文分析許鞍華在《女人四十》之後的三部電影：《女人四十》、《玉觀音》與《姨媽的後現代生活》，認為此三部電影所展現的女性主角與空間作為一種新的敘事策略，承襲她一貫的社會批判，從《女人四十》開始，許鞍華明顯大量使用女性主角，透過女性面臨父權與社會中獨有的雙重掙扎與困境，探討女性在香港以及中國社會變遷下所受的衝擊。
第一章則將《女人四十》視為許鞍華電影作品中的轉折點，對比於之前作品，《女人四十》展現了新的敘事策略，結合女性與空間展演來呈現許鞍華社會批判。透過細膩描繪劇中女主角阿娥作為一個職業婦女的日常生活，掙扎困惑於舊有傳統價值與「做自己」的現代價值觀之中來處理並洞見香港從傳統至現代化，面臨轉型的焦慮與困惑。
第二章則檢視《玉觀音》（2003），透過結合女性與空間的敘事策略，揭露中國父權無論是在都市化前的雲南或是現代化北京，依舊壓迫女性。作為許鞍華第一部中港合拍電影，許鞍華使用香港特有的警匪類型做為框架，把女性作為主角的敘事策略，陰性化（Feminize）了原本警匪片特有男性情誼架構，其目的則為呈現許鞍華對中國社會的性別不平等的強烈批判，其父權對女性刻板的刻板印象無論是在中國哪個時期，都不會抹除之狀況。
第三章則論證《姨媽的後現代生活》（2006），透過女主角姨媽在上海與鞍山兩個城市空間中疏離與困境，批判中國對後現代的美好想像。此論文更主張許鞍華除了寫實地描繪姨媽「後現代生活」與電影中的地景，更透過琳達‧哈琴（Linda Hutcheon）在後現代主義理論中提出的反諷（Irony）來強化她對於中國快速現代化的批判力道。片中上海與鞍山兩個城市各自再現毛澤東在60年代超英趕美的現代化；以及鄧小平在90時期的四個現代化，別喻中國面臨後現代化的社會轉型與其影響。透過姨媽最後的結局，其中國父權社會無論在現代或後現代社會，女性依舊逃脫不了中國傳統價值所強加在其身上對於母職的刻板期待，以及女性在社會變遷下所遭遇的雙重壓迫之事實。

Ann Hui On-Wah, the forefront director of the Hong Kong New Wave, has been working on films for over thirty years and has hitherto accumulated twenty-six films. With her first feature film The Secret (Feng jie, 1979), she impressed Hong Kong film industry for its fresh subject and innovative film style. Her consistent concerns for social issues made her films be appreciated as “products of social conscience” (Teo 150). Film critics in general discuss Ann Hui’s films under two social frames, films made before Summer Snow (1995) are approached as identity search, while those made after for confirming women’s subjectivity. However, this thesis believes that Ann Hui’s films should not be limit to these two approaches, especially when her films made after Summer Snow demonstrate a clear new narrative strategy to centralize the female protagonist in the plot and make good use of spaces so as to address both gender and broader social issues. This thesis discusses Ann Hui’s three films Summer Snow (1995), Goddess of Mercy (2003), The Postmodern Life of My Aunt (2005). It focuses on her representation of female protagonists and spaces in each film to lay out Hui’s narrative strategy and the gender and social concerns in each film. This thesis will further argue that Ann Hui’s social critiques are mediated by women’s suffering and trapped situation, directed to modernization of Hong Kong and later China.
Chapter one sees Summer Snow as Ann Hui’s turning point work, revealing her new narrative strategy. This chapter elaborates on Ann Hui’s “cinematics of everyday” to include Ann Hui’s representation of space, which often implies temporal rupture between the old and the new Hong Kong society, dislocating the female protagonists. It shows how the character May is shown to be disoriented in her daily crossing of the domestic and working spaces at the time when Hong Kong was in the process of modernization. The chapter argues that the anxiety caused by the social change from the traditional to the modern is incarnated in May’s sense of loss as she seems to be excluded from both. To Hui, the issue of women’s subjectivity is not merely a gender issue but a social issue at large.
Chapter two examines Goddess of Mercy, Ann Hui’s debut Mainland-Hong Kong coproduction film. This chapter argues that despite the film’s co-production nature and its seemingly action film genre, the film is still about women like Ann Hui’s Summer Snow and her other films. The male genre of Hong Kong action film is adopted to reinforce Ann Hui’s social critique of gender inequality. The film in fact uses heterosexual structure in the traditional Hong Kong gangster film format instead of homo social one to reveal the violence patriarchal ideology inflicts upon women. This chapter reads Goddess of Mercy closely to argue that, by adopting a male genre to tell a story about a woman, Ann Hui is making a strong statement about gender inequality in modern Chinese society. The undercover theme, which critics of The Internal Affair has quickly demonstrated to be related to the issue of identity, is borrowed in the film to emphasize women’s loss of subjectivity. It enables the audience to observe the stereotypes the patriarchal society holds about women. The film not only portrays the hidden patriarchal ideology in An Xin’s relationships with the three men, it also makes the violence that kills her and her child an allegory of what Chinese women quietly suffer every day.
Chapter three looks into Ann Hui’s The Postmodern Life of My Aunt. The film emphasizes the temporal difference between the two stages of China’s modernization from the 60s to the 90s. It “realistically” depicts the protagonist’s life of being trapped in between the modern and the postmodern China. The chapter argues that the film still contains a linear narrative to depict the protagonist as a tragic character with an ambition to pursue a “modern” life in Shanghai as an independent woman but is forced to fall back to being a domestic woman in her “home” at Anshan. Following Linda Hutcheon’s notion of postmodernism, the chapter also argues that the key tag “postmodern” in the film’s title should be understood in this sense as an irony with strong critical power. The Postmodern Life of My Aunt uses postmodern parody to show a woman like Ye is excluded from China’s postmodern drive to globalization and will always falls back to the patriarchal confinement despite her desire to be independent. By calling Ye’s life in Shanghai her “postmodern life” Ann Hui points to the irony of the term and China’s rapid modernization since the 90s.

Table of Contents

English Abstract ..........................................i

Chinese Abstract .........................................iv

Acknowledgements...........................................v

Table of Contents ....................................... vi

List of Figures..........................................vii

Introduction ..............................................1
Chapter One
Woman Lost in Transition: Summer Snow.................... 13

Chapter Two
Female Desire in Action: Goddess of Mercy .............. 27

Chapter Three
Home Is Where A Chinese Woman Always Belongs:
The Postmodern Life of My Aunt............................46

Works Cited ............................................. 62

Filmography of Ann Hui....................................67

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Asianfilmreviews. Rev. of Goddess of Mercy. dir. Ann Hui. The Best at What They Do. 28 July 2009. Web. 23. Apr. 2015. <http://asianfilmreviews.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/goddess-of-mercy-2003/>
Saroch, Andrew. Rev. of Summer Snow. Dir. Ann Hui. Fareastfilms.com. Web. 18 May. 2015
< http://www.fareastfilms.com/reviewsPage/Summer-Snow-1708.htm>

Cheuk, Paktong. “Ann Hui.” Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978-2000). Bristol : Gutenberg Press, 2008. 53-81.
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Chu, Yiuwai. “One Country Two Cultures? Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema and
Co-productions.” Eds. LouieKam. Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. 136.
Chen Xiaoyu (陳曉宇). The Catcher on the Lonely Island: Women’s images and Women’s Subjectivity in Ann Hui’s Films (孤島中的守望者:析許鞍華電影中的女性形象其女性主體意識). Young Writers: Chinese & Foreign Arts (青年作家中外文藝) 2009.12: 34-37.
Chen Juan (陳娟). “A Study on the Later Movies of Xu Anhua” (許鞍華後期電影研究). Dissertation. Wuhan: Central China Normal University,2011
Erens, Patricia Brett. “Crossing Borders: Time, Memory, and the Construction of Identity in Song of the Exile.” Cinema Journal 39(2000): 43-59.
───. “The Film Works of Ann Hui.” Eds. Poshek Fu and David Poshek Desser. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 176-195.
Funnel Lisa. “Intermedial Stars: Hong Kong Warrior Women in Post-1997 Cinema.”
Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star. USA: State University of New York Press, 2014. 57.
Ho, ElaineYee-lin. “Women in the Edges of Hong Kong Modernity:The Films of Ann Hui.” Eds. Easter C.M. Yau. At Full Speed: Honk Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2001. 177-206.
Hutcheon Linda. “The Politics of Parody.” Eds. Hawkes Terence. The Politics of
Postmodernism. (New Accent). New York: Routledge, 1989. 93-117.
Hao Jun (郝君). “The Application and Deconstruction on Subjects in Ann Hui’s Summer Snow” (淺析女性視角下《女人四十》中各元素的應用與解構). Movie Review (影視評論) 2013.04: 41-42.
Hao Jian (郝健). “A Death Game of Stepping on Both Sides of Law-A Study on Gangster
Film” (踩在法律兩邊的死亡遊戲). Study on Film and TV Genre (影視類型學). China: Peking University Press, 2002. 272
Jameson, Fedrick. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Cultural Turn:Selected Writings on the Postmodern 1983-1998. London: Verso, 1998.7. Print
───. “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic
of Late Capitalism. New York: Verso, 1991.
Jiang Sha (姜山). “Summer Snow: Ann Hui’s Realistic Representation of a Hong Kong Woman’s trip to Understanding” (《女人四十》－許鞍華寫實筆觸下中年港女的解惑之旅). Movie Review (影視評論) 2013.04: 47-49.
Kozo. Rev. of Goddess of Mercy. Lovehkfilm.com. 2004 Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
＜http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews/goddess_of_mercy.htm＞
───. “ Rev. of The Postmodern Life of My Aunt.” Lovehkfilm.com. 2006Web. Apr. 2015
<http://www.lovehkfilm.com/reviews_2/postmodern_life_of_my_aunt.htm>
Lee, Vivian P.Y. “The Hong Kong Multiplex: An Unfolding Narrative.” Hong Kong Cinema Since 1997:The Post-Nostalgic Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 213-214.
Law, Wingsang (羅永生). “The Changing Structure of Feeling in Hong Kong Undercover
Movies”(解讀香港臥底電影的情緒結構和變化). Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies (台灣社會研究季刊) 60(2005):145-177.
Lin Jinpo (李錦波). “Ways of Ann Hui: The Postmodern Life of My Aunt” (許鞍華一路走來——《姨媽的後現代生活》) Rev. of The Postmodern Life of My Aunt. dir.
Ann Hui. Hong Kong Film Critics Society (香港電影評論學會). Web 26 Mar. 2007 <http://ppt.cc/P-ra>
Funnel Lisa. “Intermedial Stars: Hong Kong Warrior Women in Post-1997 Cinema.”
Warrior Women: Gender, Race, and the Transnational Chinese Action Star. USA: State University of New York Press, 2014. 57.
Marchetti, Gina. “Gender Politics and Neoliberalism in China: Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt.” Visual Anthropology, 22.2-3(2009): 123-140
Pang, Laikwan (彭麗君). “The Male Representation and Male relationship in Milkway
Image Production” (銀河影像的男性形象與男性關係網). Sunset Not Yet: Post-1997 Hong Kong Cinema (黃昏未晚:後九七香港電影).Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. 67-93.
Perks, Sarah and AndyWills. “An Interview with Ann Hui: Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers." Cornerhouse. PDF file.
Ryan, Barbara. “Blood, Brothers, and Hong Kong Gangster Movies: Pop Culture Commentary on ‘One China’.” Asian Popular Culture. Ed. John A. Lent. San Francisco: Westview Press, 1995. 61-76.
Rooney David. “Review: The Postmodern Life of My Aunt.” Rev. The Postmodern Life of My Aunt. dir. Ann Hui. Variety. Web. 11 Sep. 2006.
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Ann Hui. Chinawin Net. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
Stokes , Lisa Odham and Michael Hoover. “To Live, Love and Die: In the Time of Twilght.” City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema. London: Verso, 1999. 141-168.
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Stewart, Susan. “On Description and the Book.” On Longing : Narrative of Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke of University Press, 1993. 23
Sun Weichuan (孫慰川). “Study on Gender representation and Sexual Consciouness in Ann Hui’s Films” (論許鞍華電影中的兩性形象及其性別意識). Journal of School of Chinese Language and Culture Nanjing Normal University (南京師範大學文學院學報) 4(2008): 146-151.
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Avalokiteśvarā -- and on the "Sex" of this Buddhist” (淺論華夏俗世婦女的觀世音信仰─兼論這位菩薩的性別問題). Chung Hwa Buddhist Journal (中華佛學學報) 15(2002): 155-175.
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Zhang Miqi (張覓奇). “ The Exploration of Women’s Consciousness in Ann Hui’s Films” (許鞍華電影中的女性意識探究). Dissertation. Yunnan: Yunnan Arts University, 2009.

Filmography of Ann Hui

CID:Murder (Shanu an), Hong Kong, 1977 (TV work).
Below The Lion Rock : Boy From Vietnam, (Lai ke), Hong Kong, 1978 (TV work).
Below The Lion Rock: Road, (Lu), Hong Kong, 1987 (TV work).
Below The Lion Rock: Bridge, (Qiao), Hong Kong, 1987(TV work).
The Secret (Feng Jie), Hong Kong, 1979.
The Spooky Bunch (Zhuang dao zheng ), Hong Kong, 1980.
Story of Woo Viet (Huyue de gushi), Hong Kong,1981.
Boat People (Touben nuhai), Hong Kong, 1982.
Love in a Fallen City (Qing cheng zhi lian), Hong Kong, 1984.
The Romance of Book and Sword I (Shujian en choulu), Hong Kong, 1987.
Princess Fragrance (Xiangxiang gongzhu),Hong Kong, China, 1987.
Starry is the Night (Jing ye sing gwong can lan), Hong Kong, 1988.
Song of the Exile (Ketu qiuhen), Hong Kong, Taiwan, 1990.
Zodiac Killer (Jidao zhuizong), Hong Kong, 1991.
My American Grandson (Shahai jiaqi), Hong Kong, Taiwan, 1991.
Summer Snow (Nuren sishi), Hong Kong, 1995.
Ah Kam (A Jin), Hong Kong, 1996.
Eighteen Springs (Ban shengyuan), Hong Kong, China, 1997.
As Time Goes By (Quri Kuduo), Hong Kong, 1997.
Ordinary Heroes (Qianyan wanyu), Hong Kong, China, 1999.
Visible Secret (Youling renjian), Hong Kong, 2001.
July Rhapsody (Nanren sishi), Hong Kong, 2001.
Goddess of Mercy, (Yu juanyin), China, 2003.
The Postmodern Life of My Life (Yima de houxiandai shenghuo), Hong Kong, China, 2006.
The Way We Are (Tian shui wei de ri yu ye), Hong Kong. 2008.
Night and Fog (Tian shui wei de ye yu wu), Hong Kong, 2009.
All About Love (Dexian chaofan), Hong Kong, 2010.
A Simple Life (Taojie), Hong Kong, 2012.
The Golden Era (Huangjin Shidai), China, 2014.