“Two gods in the household are better than one”:
Race, Religion, and Coming of Age in Eve and the Fire Horse

Rachel A. R. Bundang
Religious Studies, Santa Clara University

Rare is the film that makes you reconsider what you thought you already knew. In Eve and the Fire Horse, filmmaker Julia Kwan has done just that, by successfully making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. The movie, based in part on Kwan’s childhood and acclaimed on the festival circuit, brings the multifaith, multigenerational household of the Eng family to life. Eve recalled all the other times I had seen religion—usually some kind of Christianity—and culture intersect on film but previously taken only at face value. Thankfully, it has none of the preciousness of many indie films; instead, it keeps a reflective tone and, like its young heroine, an attitude of wonderment toward the world.

Eve depicts a year in the life of nine-year-old title character, the younger of two daughters in a Chinese-Canadian immigrant family in early 1970s Vancouver. She starts life in 1966 with a strike against her, having been born in the year of the fire horse, which, by tradition, marks her as being especially troublesome. On one hand, she is respectful and obedient in most things—a proper Chinese daughter indeed. On the other, her fire horse nature surfaces most clearly in her wild imagination and in her asking deceptively simple questions without easy answers. Eve “sees” the incredible, and she is trying to make sense of multiple cultures and faiths all at once, as only a child can. Meanwhile, her older sister Karena is bossy and single-minded in her drive for sainthood, her mother May Lin puts the Buddha and Jesus on the same level, and her father Frank thinks they have all lost their minds trying to be observant. Her extended family adds depth and dimension to this portrayal of immigrant experience.

A steady diet of Western films would normally cast Christianity as the standard and all other religions, especially Asian ones, as exotic, laced with incense and unfathomable rituals. But Kwan reverses this expectation from the opening shots, depicting first the myth of the fire horse and then the grandmother’s daily tea ceremony at her home shrine to the ancestors. There are layers upon layers of religious practice and belief shown in this multifaith household: Confucian respect for elders and ancestors, Buddhist reincarnation, black gospel, Protestant evangelization, and Catholic catechesis, all interwoven with popular culture and superstition from both Chinese and Canadian sides. There is also a touching subplot featuring Karena’s efforts to befriend and convert a Sikh classmate, singled out for his own difference.

Two themes wend their way through the film. One is the many intersections of religions and cultures; the other is religion as a means of social and cultural control. Eve is not in search of “one true faith” like her sister, who pressures her into forming a club called “The Girls of Perpetual Sorrow.” Rather, she wants to understand, perhaps even reconcile all these different strands, letting the Buddha and Jesus dance and be friends. The goddess Kwan Yin—one who smokes! and fixes plumbing!—in particular seems to be Eve’s alter ego, reflecting her own religious sensibilities: that the house eventually becomes so laden with guilt that no one can dance, and that Jesus’ ego leads to irreconcilable differences with the Buddha.

The seamlessness of the dialogue as it flows between two languages also helps weave Eve’s—and Kwan’s—singular vision of the world together. With the elders speaking Cantonese and the children often answering in English, it is a recognizable slice of immigrant life, reflecting patterns of communication between generations.

Eve and the Fire Horse is certainly about religion, but it is also about everyday life as seen through the eyes of a young girl. In identifying with her we see the tension between the familiar and the strange and recognize them as all being of a single piece. Eve’s strong imagination and sincere, questioning spirit make this a gently provocative film worth watching.