China / Hong Kong,
1997, 105 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Jia Zhangke
- prod
-
Li Kit Ming, Jia Zhangke
- scr
-
Jia Zhangke
- cam
-
Yu Lik Wai
- editor
-
Lin Xiao Ling
- cast
-
Wang Hong Wei, Hao Hong Jian, Zuo Bai Tao
- source
-
Hu Tong Communication, POB 78650 Mongkok Post Office, Hong Kong. FAX: 852-271-95634
-
COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Jia Zhangke in person.
OTHER
Fresh out of the Beijing Film Academy, Jia Zhangke has made a no-budget debut feature which starts out like an exercise in grungy social realism but gradually reveals itself as something quite extraordinary. Xiao Wu is a pickpocket, a scummy-but-likable petty criminal who preys on visitors to Fenyang, the dirt town he calls home. But times are hard and getting harder. His best friend is suddenly a “model entrepreneur” who doesn’t want to know him anymore; a visit to his family reawakens old feuds; the leggy Mei Mei, a hostess in the karaoke bar, seems to be stringing him along; and the cops are launching a crackdown on street crime.... Working outside what remains of China’s studio system and with a brilliant nonprofessional cast, Jia steadily strips away layer after layer of this loser’s armor to exposes the very core of his being. (The turning point is a bath house scene in which Xiao Wu does what he’s always refused to do in the karaoke bar: He sings his heart out.) To call this process Bressonian makes the film sound pretentious, but the fact is that the spectacle of its protagonist’s abasement becomes a truly exalting experience.
—Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival
FACTOID #14
The longest film at the Festival, Sátántangó directed by Béla Tarr, screened in 1995. This Hungarian black comedy clocked in at 435 minutes (just over seven hours).
