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Lizards in Movies
 
The Joy Luck Club (1993)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club
This is a movie, based on a best-selling novel, about two generations of women - four Chinese women who immigrated to the United States from China before the second world war and their four daughters who were all born and raised in America.

In a flashback we see one of the older women as a teenager in pre-war China. Her future husband was selected for her by matchmakers when she was only a few years old. She's still a young girl when she gets married. She doesn't know who her husband is, how old he is, or what he looks like. At her wedding ceremony her face is covered with a red cloth and she is not allowed to see her husband until after the ceremony.

On the wedding night, she sits on a bed with her face covered waiting for her husband to come. We hear footsteps and see from her perspective under the face cover what look like a man's shoes and legs walking toward the bed then stopping next to her. With her face still covered she tells him that she prayed to the gods many days for him not to be too ugly or too old. When he pulls off the red cloth, she is shocked to see that he is just a boy, even younger than herself. She says that maybe she prayed too hard.

The boy holds up a green lizard to scare her, and she jumps back screaming. Then he tells her that as the husband he makes all the decisions and that she has to sleep on the floor while he sleeps on the bed. She's unhappy about that and that her new husband is a little boy who still plays with lizards. She lies down on the floor frowning. When she sees the lizard running around on the floor, she reaches out angrily to swat at it. When the lizard runs away from her in fear, we finally see her smile.