“Playing Three-Dimensional Chess”: Balancing Personal Lives and the Status Quo in Violet Du Feng’s ‘The Dating Game’

At the start of Violet Du Feng’s Sundance-debuting The Dating Game we learn that, due to the former one-child policy, China now has 30 million more men than women, an eye-catching number that presents dire implications for the country. But behind the cold facts are flesh and blood human beings — and potential clients for a dating coach named Hao. Hao trains lovelorn males in the techniques of “strategic deception”, such as makeovers, enhanced social media profiles, and cagey communication skills. It’s into this faux glamorous world that three rural wife-seekers step. Zhou, Li, and Wu are all shy but willing to try as they take part in Hao’s fast-paced, week-long dating boot camp. They begin to question what to wear, who to pursue — and most importantly, how far on the spectrum between truth and lies they’re willing to go to meet their match. While the doc is specific to China, it’s also universal in its critique of how capitalism, consumerism, and social media collide to create a generation that assumes everyone is faking who they are and therefore concludes that they too must “fake it to make it.” As the film progresses, we learn that Hao’s just a village boy who made it in the big city, and even managed to land the stylish Wen (herself a dating coach for women whose advice couldn’t be more at odds with that of her husband’s). In other words, what Hao is really selling is the eternal rags to riches story, the forever elusive Chinese dream. A week before the film’s World Cinema Documentary Competition premiered today, Documentary reached out to Feng, whose Peabody and Emmy-nominated Hidden Letters (2022) tackled gender stereotypes from the female side.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.