Water-sites and Sexuality: (Re-)thinking the Femme Fatale in East Asian Noir

By identifying the meanings of water-sites in three crime films from China, Korea and Japan, this article intends to rethink the persona of femme fatale in the East Asian context. Water scenes, in relation to a noir sensibility, can somehow define the (im)possible female power in noir cinema. This can be interpreted by looking at how female bodies are represented in the metaphorical water-sites in the movies, and how water spaces can engage with the urban discourse in terms of capitalism, traumatic traditions, and domestic order. Water, mainly sea, is metaphorically associated with death, sexuality, and border spaces. Combining "water" and "space" in the three case studies, I will respond to the idea of "centrifugal" and "centripetal" spaces (Dimendberg, 2004) that film noir is concerned with. The juxtapositions of female bodies with the water space prove that women are either briefly reversed and then immediately swallowed up by male society (The Wild Goose Lake), or only as victims representing the countryside and a gender-neutral avenger when freed from their feminine desires (Bedevilled), or just a deadly woman with a bluff that ultimately satisfies the director, and indeed the audience's voyeurism (Cold Fish). In these three cases, water is shown as a potential screen, a landscape, and an artifact in these films that proves to be merely a temporary relief. Ultimately, a male order is summoned within the Confucian patriarchy. The responses of these deadly women to sexism, crime, and violence in the East Asian context are proved to be incomplete.