Blind Massage

Blind Massage (2014)

推拿

The employees of a massage parlour share a close bond with each other as they all share a trait in common, they are all visually impaired.

Date of release
2014-02-17
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (51)
Runtime
1h 54m
Genres
Drama
Director
Lou Ye

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film

Blind Massage is a 2014 drama film directed by Lou Ye and based on the 2008 novel Massage by Bi Feiyu. The film entered into the competition for the Golden Bear at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.

Production

The original novel Massage was inspired by author Bi Feiyu's personal experiences and reflections from frequently visiting a blind massage parlor near his home in Nanjing.

Director Lou Ye stated that adapting the novel into a film was very challenging due to the heavy focus on characters' psychological states, which are difficult to translate visually; his task was to capture the spirit of each character. He described challenges including ensemble scenes, scattered perspectives, impressionistic descriptions, and the author's use of flashbacks.

Filming began in 2012 on location in Nanjing, the setting of the original story, including locations such as a blind massage shop on Wutai Mountain, Xuanwu Lake Park, Zhujiang Road residential buildings, the Music Hall of the Population Institute, and a large hospital in the northern part of the city. Post-production was completed in early 2014, marking Lou Ye's longest working period on a film.

Blind people played a significant role both in front of and behind the camera. The crew visited many massage centers and schools for the blind to select blind actors. A consultant on blindness was invited to teach the entire crew about better communication with blind people. Additionally, a blind acting coach was hired, and the script was provided in Braille. All blind actors read the script by touch.

Unlike other films, Massage opens without subtitles; the title and main credits are read aloud as voice-over. Lou Ye explained: "The voice-over is essentially a simple blind person’s audio track. This is a story about blind people, and I want blind audiences to be able to 'see' this film through sound."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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