Green Snake

Green Snake (青蛇, 1993) is a Hong Kong fantasy from director Tsui Hark, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Two serpent spirits take human shape to learn what love and pain actually feel like.

The sisters come down from the mountains into the world of people. White Snake (Joey Wong), the elder, falls for a timid scholar and aches to become a real woman. Green (Maggie Cheung), the younger, treats desire as a game — teasing, testing, never quite sure where the act ends and feeling begins. Against them stands the monk Fahai (Vincent Zhao), so fixated on purity that he can't see his own pride rotting underneath.

Adapted from Lilian Lee's novel, itself a retelling of the old Legend of the White Snake, the film drowns its frames in mist, silk and liquid motion. Few things in nineties Hong Kong cinema feel this sensual. Cheung barely fights here; she dances along the seam between animal and human. Stream Green Snake (1993) online on iFILM.