Chinese Ghost Story meets French pop music

Part of the goodies I brought back with me from France when I returned a week ago was a stack of DVDs I bought at the Virgin Megastore on Champs-Élysées.  It hasn't been easy to find music and concert videos of my favorite French pop singer - Mylène Farmer - outside of France.  I decided it was time for me to just go and grab everything I didn't already own...

Mid-way through the series of music videos I came across one that caught my attention.  L'Âme-stram-gram is a song I've listened to numerous times, and here I was watching the video for the first time, surprised by the image of Mylène dressing up in what looked like Chinese period costume, running around a set that resembled the great wall.  Later on in the video, Mylène's character and her twin were flying around and extending their long, snake-like (or lizard-like) tongues...



My first thought was that this was a reference to the Legend of the White Snake (白蛇傳), but once I watched the "making of" clip entitled "Les 5 Jours de Pekin" I realized how far off I was.  The music video was actually directed by Ching Siu Tong (程小東), the director behind A Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂).  In the back of my mind, I had kinda known that the movie was somewhat popular in the West, but this was anecdotal evidence of how far the influence has reached.  To have a major French pop star seek out a Chinese director to work on her video... that doesn't happen every day.

By the way, I love Mylène... just in case it's not clear.  She's one of my favorite performers.