Eve and the Fire Horse

When Julia Kwan’s grandmother died, her parents said the grandmother had been reincarnated as a goldfish. The report from Sunday school was quite different: Grandma had gone to hell. Eve and the Fire Horse is Kwan’s story of a young Chinese-Canadian girl who attempts to reconcile these competing cosmologies. Eve’s family is absent or preoccupied as she concocts elaborate spiritual fantasies involving the antics and adventures of Jesus, the Buddha and the dancing Chinese goddesses. When her imaginary playmates begin to quarrel, the feisty Eve looks for resolutions that will let them all live in harmony. This charming film is marred only by the overly unsympathetic character of Eve’s older sister, whose intense embrace of Christianity has almost lethal repercussions.