What a flower is the Jasmine flower
Its fragrance unparalled
But pluck it not early
Or it will never bloom

How true, how true. And how aptly portrayed in 'Jasmine Women'.

The movie portrays 3 generations of women, named Mo, Li and Hua. [For the less linguistically-abled among us, a mo li hua is a jasmine flower.]

Played by Zhang Ziyi, all 3 women are different in their subtle ways from each other, but the similarities in personalities are striking. The one flaw being that none of them seem to have any luck finding happiness with men, and always rush headlong in relationships, getting burned along the way.

hence the song. Pluck it too early, and it will never bloom for you.

And plucked early they were. The Grandmother, Mo, in her innocence was seduced by movie light glamour into becoming the mistress of the Director, who subsequently left her when she refused to get an abortion. The resulting child, Li, cannot conceive, and her impending insanity indirectly leads to the suicide of her husband. The child she adopts, Hua, secretly gets married to a graduate student who is too busy studying in another state to see her, and later asks for a divorce.

That's some fodder for about a few HK dramas.

The interesting thing is that the 3 different women make the same mistake about men that their predecessors did. Which leads me to wonder:

Are we doomed to the sins of our mothers?

I know that just by being in school, I've started to take on some of the characteristics and bylines that my own mother used to use on me. I suppose she being my first mentor in child management, it's understandable that some things I do will naturally be an echo of her.

But when it comes to men?

Are we doomed to make the same mistakes our mothers did?