Yangguang canlan de rizi
Hong Kong/Taiwan/China,
1994, 139 min
Shown in 1995
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jiang Wen
- prod
-
Ki Po, Hsu An-chin, Guo Youliang
- scr
-
Jiang Wen
- cam
-
Gu Changwei
- editor
-
Zhou Ying
- cast
-
Xia Yu, Ning Jing, Geng Le, Shang Nan, Tao Hong
- source
-
Little Big Company
-
COMMENTS
Jiang Wen in person.
OTHER
A pack of teenage army brats enter puberty, join gangs, skip school, get into trouble, fight and obsess about getting laid. But this rite of passage is set in the Beijing of the late 1960s and early ’70s and their army dads are off spreading the words and deeds of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. One of the best Chinese actors of this generation, Jiang Wen (Red Sorghum; Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch, SFIFF 1991; Hibiscus Town), makes his directing debut with this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film that shimmers in the light of the summer sun and reflected memory. The story unfolds in episodic style: Monkey Ma (Wen’s own childhood nickname was Monkey) is hot for the beautiful and enigmatic Mi Lan and is out to impress her and his gang, the Young and Provoked. But she has eyes for leader-of-the-pack Liu Yiku, who in turn seems to be getting somewhere with wild-girl Yu Beipei. It’s a fracas waiting to happen—and it does. But there’s no easy lost-youth stereotyping in the film’s sensitive and affectionate look at both the testosterone-hyped teenagers and the objects of their desire. Without waving Little Red Books or large red banners, Jiang Wen puts a generation into perspective and opens up a fresh new view of Mainland China.
FACTOID #35
The first film retrospective accompanying a tribute at the Festival was a Tribute to Warner Bros., featuring Jack L. Warner in person, October 26, 1966.
