Painted Skin is about love, coming from the same author who wrote the story behind The Fox Lovers Movie deriving from Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio. It is a supernatural Chinese classical story based on myths and legends believed by common people in that era – that demons, fox spirits and supernatural powers exist in the backdrop of unorthodox Taoist beliefs to deal with them. 
In Painted Skin, a warrior rescues a demon who disguised herself as a victim of bandits – she was at the point of getting raped when the warrior rescued her. They fall in love at the point of him rescuing her from the bandits. He brings her home and takes her in as a family member. The tension in the story lies with the fact that the warrior is already married to a woman, and he believes that he has to remain loyal, when in fact, he is in love with the young girl.
In the events that unfold, they find themselves in situations that push the norms of love and marriage conventions at that era.
There are several love triangles at play:
- The wife has a past lover who is a war hero, who has came back to the village to hunt down the demon.
- Unknown to all, the demon who had disguised herself as a lovely young girl is the source of deaths in the city
- The female demon has a male demon lover who kills villagers at night to bring their hearts to feed her, although she is in love with a human, the male demon doesn’t care.
- The war hero is still in love with the wife and thinks her husband bringing back a young girl to his home is infringing on her modesty.
At the end, all the characters had to confront what it is to experience true love by letting go.
- The wife had to confront that her husband is in love with the female demon and commit suicide so that they can pursue happiness.
- The male demon had to accept that the female demon doesn’t love him but has fallen in love with a human, which greatly insults him but he will be there for her nevertheless
- The war hero had to accept that the wife did not choose him, but that doesn’t mean he loves her and will be there for her in the moment of crisis.
- The female demon had to confront that she could not be selfish in her love and that love wasn’t about getting what she wants, but about letting others pursue their happiness
- The demon hunter could only open her sealed sword only by the expression of love and not hate. Only the expression of love could enable her to kill the demons.
I truly enjoyed the movie, especially the pool scene which finally expressed the authentic feelings of the husband, that although he keeps denying what is there, that he is truly in love with the demon by having a vivid dream of her in a red dress, going into a hidden pool behind a cave, and making love in the passionately in an illicit romance that existed as a fantasy but he could not enact in reality due to the fact he was married. It was the moment of revelation in the whole movie that the husband was pretending that there was nothing going on, that he didn’t consider the young girl as his lover, but he kept it so hidden well in his thoughts to be a good husband and general, to the extent he sacrificed his own freedom and expression of love by declining to take on a mistress. Which, was the biggest mistake he made for he could have a wife and a mistress and it would be what he actually wanted, instead of his pretence that he had to prove he is “better than that”.
 |
AVERRAL writes under pen name Scarlet Risqué. She stars in Scarlet Queen YouTube with over a million views. She holds a degree in business. The RED HOURGLASS is ranked Top 50 Espionage Thriller on Amazon. She is currently writing the sequels to the Hourglass Series. Grab a free copy of her novel now RED HOURGLASS on Amazon |
Learn about secrets to flawless make-up free skin at DR Secret 
