Green Snake

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This article is about the Hong Kong film Green Snake. For the North American Green snake, see Opheodrys.

Green Snake

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

The novel itself is a variation of a Chinese folk tale Madame White Snake, where Lillian Lee tells the story from the perspective of Xiaoqing, the Green Snake, who normally plays a minor role behind the main character Bai Suzhen, the White Snake. As the title suggests, the movie also features Xiaoqing as the main character.

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

[edit] Plot

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 proceeds to get engaged with local scholar Hsui Xien, with whom she plans to have a child who 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 from the human world. The monk thinks of himself as a keeper of the natural order of the world and is very prejudiced against spiritual beings seeking to improve themselves. He brings things to a head when he abducts White's husband from the human/spirit mixed marriage into his religious reeducation camp–styled temple.