Initially the story of an HIV+ woman who was “not afraid of dying”, the question arose during editing as to whether the film’s subject, Zhang Xi, was telling the “truth” with regard to her own story, or fabricating it. Eventually, the film became less about the “reality” of Zhang’s life, and more about her own narration of it: she decides the story, the cast, the arrangement of dramatic events. No longer faced with questions of truth or falsehood, we instead follow Zhang Xi’s exploration of her own suppressed or as-yet-unsatisfied desires.
