ABSTRACT
A Touch of Sin has received an enormous amount of attention and has been shown in many countries. In comparison with the director’s other prize-winning works, the uniqueness of A Touch of Sin’s lies in its content as well as its form. Since the film shows the desperation faced by people enduring humiliation and their final retaliation, considering Jia’s other films thus far, which sympathetically portray the lamentable lives of the lower classes in the spirit of critical realism, we could wonder whether this film reaches a new critical stage of revolutionary realism. Against many popular opinions, I suggest that, although the film focuses on acts of rebellion, it takes a reactionary stance against the aged-old Chinese tradition of chivalry and shows the elite’s viewpoint on social contradiction, which is at odds with the ordinary populace.
