Life Show is one of the few films based on the work of Chinese novelist Chi Li (although there have been a number of TV series).
Chi Li is one of the more interesting Chinese novelist of the last few decades. With fellow (mainly female) authors like Fang Fang, she has created a body of new realist fiction telling stories of real people in an actually existing China (in Chi’s case set in her home town of Wuhan).
Lai Shuangyang [Tao Hong, commanding the role] is a food-stall owner (selling cooked duck necks) in a Wuhan night market. The stall seems to be going well but she has plenty of problems.
Divorced and having lost a young child, her drug-addicted younger brother, Jiujiu [Pan Yueming], is in prison while the older brother Shuangyuan [Liu Yijun] and his wife frequently leave their young son with her to mind while they go off on various money-making schemes. She is also struggling to arrange the legal return of their family home ‘borrowed’ during the Cultural Revolution.
One of her customers, the wealthy Mr. Zhou [Tao Zeru], shows more interest in Shuangyang than he does in the duck necks but, although tempted, she seems too occupied to embark on an affair.
When flattery and flirting fail to influence Mr. Zhang [Luo Deyuan] in the property registration office, she marries off her assistant, country girl Ah Mei [Yang Yi], to his disabled son. This seems to move things along and the home is finally returned to the family. But she hears that the night market will be demolished and developed as residential apartments.
Shuangyang decides to take a chance on Mr. Zhou but, predictably, he turns out not to have any long-term intentions, at least not of marriage. And, to make matters worse, it turns out that his interest in the night market is largely because he is one of the developers who is seeking to close it down.
Nothing very dramatic happens and the story is simply that of ordinary people living ordinary lives in a rapidly changing city. Director Huo Jianqi captures well the low key drama and the gritty urban environment. Its a somewhat unusual film for Huo who is usually to be found in lush rural surroundings (Postman in the Mountains, Love in the 1980s).
Unfortunately, very little of Chi’s work is available in English though several of her novellas have been translated in French including the story on which this film is based.
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