Green Snake

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Green Snake
Produced by Tsui Hark
Ng See Yuen
Written by Lilian Lee (novel)
Tsui Hark
Starring Maggie Cheung
Joey Wong
Release date(s) 1993 (Hong Kong)
Running time 99min.
Language Cantonese
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Green Snake ( 青蛇 Chinese literal title: Teal/Green Snake) is a fantasy film made by Tsui Hark. It is the adaptation of the novel of the same title by Lilian Lee.

The novel itself is a variation of a Chinese folklore Madame White Snake, where Lillian Lee tells the story from the perspective of Qingqing, the Green Snake, who normally plays a minor role behind the main character Bai Suzhen, the White Snake.

The movie also, as the title suggested, portrayed Qingqing as the main character.

Actresses Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong played Green Snake and White Snake respectively.

[edit] Plot synopsis

Two snake spirits have been training for many centuries to take human form and experience the love, freedom and wisdom that is supposedly only available to humans. White Snake is the more experienced one and procedes by getting engaged with local scholar Hsui Xien, with whom she plans to have a child that would complete her passage into the mortal realm. Green Snake is the younger and more impulsive of the two sisters and she is not yet quite sure about the benefits of the human world. The two snakes move into their magically created house and start a successful medical practice in the town.

Their enemies are a buffoonish Taoist and an overzealous Buddhist monk who make various attempts to banish them out of the human world again. The buddhist monk is very prejudiced against spiritual beings seeking to better themselves, and brings things to a head when he abducts White's husband from the human/spirit mixed marriage into his religious reeducation camp styled temple.

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