It's like Romeo and Juliet, but with crazier killer hair!
The Bride With White Hair is a 1993 Wuxia film directed by Ronny Yu, starring Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin. Based on Liang Yusheng's novel Baifa Monü Zhuan (Legend of the Lady With White Hair), but mixed with elements of Romeo and Juliet, the film tells the forbidden love story between a swordsman and the mystical titular character, and its consequences on both of them.
Zhuo Yi-hang (Cheung) is a swordsman of the Wudang Sect, who is raised to battle an evil cult. One night, Yi-hang happens to stumble across a mysterious woman, Lian Ni-chang (Lin), who is raised in the wild before, unbeknownst to him, being adopted by the very same cult he's sworn to destroy. Despite their first meeting going off on a rocky start, Ni-chang and Yi-hang eventually start developing feelings for each other, until their allegiances gets in the way.
Has a sequel, The Bride With White Hair 2, which is also released in 1993, just four months later. The sequel depicts the aftermath of Yi-hang's meeting with Ni-chang, and his desire to wait for her return decades later.
The Bride With White Hair 1 and 2 contains examples of:
- Attack Hello: Ni-chang and Yi-hang's first meeting ends with her attacking him and the two of them fighting until reaching a stalemate, although he's reluctant to actually battle her.
- Barbarian Longhair: On Yi-hang in his first scene, before the flashback to his younger days.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The climax of the second movie. Ni-chang fighting Yi-hang.
- Battle Couple: Yi-hang and Ni-chang fighting Ji Wu-shuang, the Big Bad.
- Blood from the Mouth: Yi-hang, after being stabbed fatally by Ni-chang.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Poor Ni-chang suffers this during the walk of shame moment, getting beaten up by the sect members while walking through a cavern whose floor is covered in rock spikes while barefoot. With Yi-hang being Forced to Watch.
- Conjoined Twins: The Ji Wu-shuang twins, who leads the cult that adopted Ni-chang, and raised her to be a ruthless killer. They are of different genders, but can act and react uniformly thanks to Synchronization.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Ni-chang against Zhuo Yi-hang's former sect. She defeats the two dozen clan members attacking her simply by lashing out with her hair, in just a couple of minutes, with none of her victims even getting close to her.
- Death by Childbirth: The mother of the couple Yi-Hang and Ni-Chang try to help dies while giving birth to her son. The husband is understandably distraught, so Yi-Hang reminds him he still has a son, gives him a jewel, and tells him to start a business.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Yi-hang, in Ni-chang's arms at the end of the second movie. She joins him soon after.
- Distant Sequel: The second movie takes place decades after the first, if Yi-hang's Expository Hairstyle Change is any indication. But only in-universe, in real-life, both movies are separated by a 4-month gap.
- Downer Ending: BOTH movies.
- The Bride With White Hair ends with Ni-chang forced to leave Yi-hang because of his betrayal, and Yi-hang spending entire decades waiting for her in the cavern where he met her for the first time.
- The Bride With White Hair 2 ends with Ni-chang killing Yi-hang herself in her rage, before getting killed herself.
- Earthy Barefoot Character: Ni-chang can be considered this as well, given how she's raised in the wild before being taken in by a cult who forbids her from seeing the outside world.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Yi-hang, while watching Ni-chang taking her shower in an underground cavern. And most likely the audience too.
- Epic Flail: Before having her hair turned white, Ni-chang primarily uses a flail as her weapon.
- Establishing Character Moment: In the early part of the Flashback that makes up the bulk of the first film, we first see Yi-hang as a boy fleeing with a lamb that was about to be killed, which shows his essentially kind heart.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin / Non-Indicative Title: Half-and-half; the titular character does have white hair, but she gets betrayed by her lover before she can become his bride. Played straight for the original Mandarin title, who doesn't mention anything about her being a bride.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: For most of the first movie Ni-chang had her hair in normal black colour, until the final act after Zhuo Yi-hang is forced to abandon her, whereupon his betrayal made her go through a massive Heroic RRoD before having her hair turning white overnight.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Ni-chang, using her whips - and later, her hair - can lash out with enough strength to bisect opponents into half if hit at waist level.
- How We Got Here: The first movie begins with Yi-hang, now an elderly man (Leslie Cheung in makeup), narrating his past about his lover, Ni-chang, before flashing back to his younger days as a warrior trainee and his life-changing encounter with Ni-chang,
- Humiliation Conga: Ni-chang in the second half of the first movie; after being betrayed, she is forced through a humiliating walk of shame while barefoot, through a cavern whose floor is covered in rock spikes, while having Yi-hang's former sect members curses, jeers, and hurl insults at her while lashing out repeatedly the whole way, before she eventually passes out after reaching the end of the cavern. And when she regains consciousness, her black hair is now entirely white, turning her into the titular bride.
- I Will Wait for You: At the end of the first movie, after Ni-chang left Yi-hang because of his forced betrayal, Yi-hang would spend the next few decades waiting for her, hoping to see her again. His patience paid off in the sequel.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Ultimately, what allows Ni-chang to forgive Yi-hang's betrayal, is him allowing her to skewer him alive with her razor-sharp hair, where he ends up succumbing in her arms.
- Lady in Red: Ni-chang spends most of the first movie wearing an oriental red dress, which is prominently seen in several posters or trailers.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Ji Wushuang, the Big Bad of the picture, blows up into chunks after his/her defeat.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Both Yi-hang and Ni-chang have this reaction in both movies.
- The first movie had Yi-hang realizing his betrayal of Ni-chang have utterly destroyed her, put her through a massive Humiliation Conga and all sorts of suffering, before becoming an Empty Shell of herself. He spends the remainder of the movie as The Atoner to seek her forgiveness.
- The second movie had Ni-chang impaling Yi-hang with her hair, mortally injuring him in the process before she realize his love to her is still pure, and he is willing to let her kill him if it means earning her back.
- Pet the Dog: Though Ni-Chang is established as a killer early on in the first film, when she sees Yi-Hang trying to help out a pregnant woman and her husband caught in the crossfire of a battle between the clans and the evil cult, she stops to help Yi-Hang deliver the baby, which shows her Hidden Depths.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: Ni-chang is barefoot in most of her scenes, either indoors or outdoors. She ends up suffering Agony of the Feet during the walk of shame montage.
- Prehensile Hair: Ni-chang, the titular bride, whose hair can be used as a whip or as Razor Floss. The movie never explains how she combs her hair every morning, not that it needs to.
- Punched Across the Room: Yi-hang gets palmed across the room by Ni-chang, after she realize his betrayal.
- Raised by Wolves: Part of Ni-chang's backstory involves her being abandoned in the woods and raised by wolves, which is the reason behind her feral nature and preference of going barefoot everywhere.
- Rescue Romance: Though Yi-Hang has long been attracted to Ni-Chang for a while, it's likely she falls in love with him when he sucks the poison out of her from an arrow Lu Hua shot into her.
- Sexy Soaked Shirt: Ni-chang, during a Furo Scene in a cavern's underground pool... with her clothes on. It's in this scene where Yi-hang first saw her and understandably becomes infatuated with her.
- Shower Scene: Part of the bonding scene between Ni-chang and Yi-hang have both of them, wearing as little clothing as the film can allow, taking a Waterfall Shower together while making out.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Zhuo Yi-hang, a swordsman from a sect where love is forbidden, and Ni-chang, an orphan adopted by wolves before being raised in a cult.
- Step into the Blinding Fight: Practically all the action scenes in both movies takes place at night, and are in dimly-lit rooms or in dark caverns.
- That Man Is Dead: A Gender Flipped version: After Yi-Hang betrays Ni-Chang, and she confronts him by holding a sword at his throat, he calls out her name, to which she replies, "She is dead."
- Together in Death: Ni-chang and Yi-hang in the end of the second movie.
- Unkempt Beauty: Ni-chang, after the walk of shame montage when she regains consciousness.
- Wire Fu: Both Ni-chang and Yi-hang can traverse great distances In a Single Bound, thanks to some wireworks. Especially the former.
- Wuxia
