Beijing Bicycle [A Seventeen Year Old’s Bicycle in Chinese] is Wang Xiaoshui’s first really commercial film, if not his first official release (the gritty So Close to Paradise). It has been quite well received both in China (7.8 on Douban) and outside and is perhaps his most widely seen film outside China (more votes on IMDB than the recent So Long, My Son). But it tries to be too many things to too many people.
Seventeen year old migrant worker Guei [Cui Lin] gets a job with a delivery service in Beijing. He’s provided with a bicycle but has to pay it off. Just as he has almost bought it out, the bike is stolen. He convinces his boss not to fire him if he can find the bike.
Of course, this would never happen in reality but Guei does find the bicycle which is now in the possession of student Jian [Li Bin]. He has been promised a bike by his father but when this does not materialise, he steals money and buys the bike in a secondhand market. This allows him to keep up with his friends and show off to possible girlfriend Xiaoxiao [Gao Yuanyuan].
The two boys tussle for the bike which goes back and forward before they eventually agree to share it. The side stories are rather perfunctory. Xiaoxiao is interested in Jian who largely ignores her until she finds a more attentive partner to which he reacts violently. Zhou Xun plays a mysterious young woman who Guei and his friends spy on but the main purpose seems to be to have something for Ms. Zhou to do in the film.
Overall, not much happens, the film is repetitive and stories about rural migrants struggling in a city and/or students growing up have been done better elsewhere (including by Wang himself). Comparisons are frequently made with de Sica’s Bicycle Thief but other than the fact that a bike is stolen, there is little to compare. Neo-realism this is not.
A Taiwan-France co-production which perhaps adds to the lack of authenticity of the film when one compares to, for example, So Close to Paradise.
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