Joan of Arc of Mongolia is a 1989 film from West Germany directed by Ulrike Ottinger.
A group of Westerners is taking the Trans-Siberian Express across Russia. They include Lady Windermere, an ethnologist with extensive expertise of Central Asian nomadic cultures (Delphine Seyrig in her last film role); Fanny Ziegfeld, an American musical theater star; Frau Muller-Volwinkel, a German schoolteacher; and the Kalinka sisters, a trio of singers.
Most of the passengers in the group change trains to the Trans-Mongolian Express to travel through Mongolia to China. However, in Mongolia the train is attacked and robbed by a tribe of Mongolian nomads. The Western women are taken as hostages, but it's a comfortable imprisonment, as they are treated well while getting to watch the life and ritual of a Mongolian nomadic tribe.
Tropes:
- Ambiguously Gay: There's a lesbian subtext running throughout the whole second part of the film, after the Mongolian tribe robs the train. First off, the male characters, Mickey Katz and the Russian officer and his tap-dancing adjutant, do not change trains and go to Mongolia. Second, the Mongolians only take women as hostages. There's also implied lesbian relationships and even a Love Triangle between Lady Windermere, Giovanna, and Princess Ulan Iga. In the first part of the film on the train, Giovanna is staying in Lady Windermere's cabin. Later, when they're with the Mongolian tribe, Giovanna starts spending all of her time with the princess. Ulan Iga has a scene where she talks about all the ways the color red can be beautiful, finishing with "Red are the cheeks of a happy woman," and then touching Giovanna's cheek. This is immediately followed by a scene where Lady Windermere tells Fanny that Giovanna's moods are "changeable like the moon" and that "she will share the yurt of our hostess."
- As You Know: Princess Ulan Iga is met by an emissary from the Kharatsin, another tribe, who says that he's there to make amends for how his tribe attacked her tribe's caravan and stole all their stuff. The audience knows this because the emissary delivers a long, long, flowery speech describing just how the Kharatsin attacked her tribe (the Mongholt) and stole all their stuff.
- Big Eater: Mickey Katz, the Yiddish vaudevillian, is asked what he would like for dinner. He requests an absurdly long list of dishes that ends with powdered stag horn. Soon after he is served an entire table of food that is capped off with a whole roasted duck.
- Going Native: At first it seems to be played straight, as Giovanna learns the Mongolian language, wears Mongolian dress, and stays behind with the Mongolians when the train finally leaves. But it's subverted in the end when she races on horseback to the train and jumps on, following Princess Ulan Iga herself, who turns out to be Westernized.
- Hand Wave: So, why do the Mongolians take a bunch of white women off the train and into the steppe? There's a mention of them needing "hostages", but there's never any other suggestion that anyone is looking to punish them for robbing the train or even knows that they're the ones who did it. Then at the end, the princess sends the white ladies on their way, the whole business about needing hostages apparently forgotten.
- Inner Monologue: A lot of this from Lady Windermere in the early going, as she thinks about the hard work it took to build the train and the beauty of the Asian steppe.
- Shout-Out: It's not very subtle when Frau Muller-Vohwinkel, the German teacher, pronounces the Trans-Siberian Express to be "a Triumph of the Will."
- Train Job: A tribe of nomads robs the Trans-Mongolian Express.
- Translated Cover Version: At the impromptu concert on the train, Katz sings "Toot Toot, Tootsie" in Yiddish.
- Translation Convention: Everybody on the train, including the British ethnologist, the American backpacker, and the American stage performer, all speak fluent German and/or French.
- Twist Ending: The last scene finds Princess Ulan Iga, the warrior queen of the Mongolian steppe, on the train with Lady Windermere, wearing a Western-style dress. It turns out she's fully Westernized and was only with her nomadic tribe on the steppe for summer vacation.
- Two-Act Structure: The first part of the film is a Speech-Centric Work in which a bunch of colorful people are taking a train through a remote part of Asia. About a third of the way through the train is hijacked and the setting completely changes, as the first-class passengers are taken away by a Mongolian tribe.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Delivered in voiceover by Lady Windermere. She wrote a book about her experience, the German schoolteacher became a Buddhist nun, Fanny starred in a new musical called "Transmongolia", and Giovanna and Princess Ulan Iga opened a restaurant together in Paris.
- William Telling: The Kalinka sisters and the lady archers of the tribe indulge in a variation of this. The sisters bang three gongs, then hold the gongs in front of their faces. The archers then shoot their arrows, hitting the centers of the gongs every time and not the Kalinkas.
- The X of Y: Joan of Arc of Mongolia
- Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Frau Muller-Volwinkel hangs out her laundry to dry, only for the Mongolian women to flip out and chase her with burning sticks. It turns out that hanging laundry outside is an offense to Tengri, the sky god.
