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Similar to La Chinoise, by Jean-Luc Godard, the french language film uses theory and Chinese imagery to criticise capitalism.

According to Richard Metzger, of Dangerous Minds, the film is a “a critique of class conflicts, bureaucratic socialism, the failures of the French Communist Party, Maoism, cultural hegemony, sexual equality and the way movies prop up Capitalist ideology.”

The Situationist movement go the 60s argued that the persistence of capitalism relied on the system turning lived experiences into "anaesthetizing ‘spectacles’ that perpetuated alienation." Viénet's layering of radical Marxist discourse over a martial arts film delivers political messages through the use of humour as a way of "forcing audiences to actively confront the mechanics of their own entertainment."

The film is one of the few remaining examples of a situationist use of cinema, since Guy Debord withdrew his films from circulation.