Director: Wang Xioshuai, China, 15, 121min
Stars: Gao Yuanyuan, Li Bin, Yao Anlian, Tang Yang
On selected release
This episodic, dour story from the director of the more life- affirming Beijing Bicycle focuses on the uprooted lives of a generation that moved from Shanghai in the Maoist 1960s to work in factories in the undeveloped Guizhou province. Set in 1983 in a world of sad dance halls and lonesome mountain life, it sees a tyrannical father’s determination to return to Shanghai though the eyes of his teenage daughter experiencing first love. It’s so bleak that you wonder why the youngsters have such an attachment to their depressed community, while the characterisations remain too sketchy to make one really care.
IAN JOHNS