Yuanli zhanzheng de niadai
China,
1987, 93 min
Shown in 1989
CREDITS
- dir
-
Hu Mei
- scr
-
Li Baolin
- cam
-
Zhang Li
- cast
-
Huang Zongluo, Wang Zuenqi, Zhu Lin
- source
-
China Film Export and Import Inc.
-
COMMENTS
Hu Mei in person.
OTHER
Hu Mei is the foremost woman director of China's new wave and this is her second movie: straight domestic drama at first glance, but shot through with seductive, Leone-esque flashbacks and with a string of firecrackers dangerously near its tank. Retired soldier Gu (played with memorably ragged charm by the distinguished stage actor Huang Zongluo) shares a cramped Beijing apartment with his son's family until the day he takes off alone, fired by memories of what seems to have been the one moment of real passion in his life: a sexual encounter with a peasant girl during the anti-Japanese war. He is in many ways typical of his generation (the first-generation Communists who can't really adjust to the changes of the ’80s), and Hu Mei seems to have invested the character with her feelings about her own father—who was snatched away by Red Guards when she was only nine. But the old man is not the only one who's "far from war" in a film that uncovers many of the tensions and divisions that lie beneath the surface of present-day Chinese life. Ms. Hu turns in a movie that's warm, funny, touching and very elegantly shot
—Tony Rayns
FACTOID #109
Though the film had won two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams was pulled from the SFIFF program at the last minute by the distributor. According to Cassavetes, MGM/UA was concerned that showing Streams, which the director himself proclaimed ’a crazy film,’ at the SFIFF might hurt the film’s box office upon wider release
