Little Red Flowers [看上去很美] (2006)

Four year old Qiangqiang [Dong Bowen] is left in a nursery by his parents whose work involves much travelling. Little Qiang finds it difficult to fit into the strict routine of the nursery. The workers include the strict Li [Rui Zhao] and the kinder Tang [Li Xiaofeng]. They award the little red flowers of the…

Devils on the Doorstep [鬼子来了] (2000)

Devils on the Doorstep, rather unusually for a Chinese film, opens with a stirring rendition of a Japanese military song. The film is set in 1945 in a small village in north China (Hebei) during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. The occupying Japanese troops go out on regular patrols (with their marching band)…

Red River [红河] (2009)

Red River by director Jerry Zhang, is an unusual take on the relationship between China and Viet Nam, at least at the human level. It opens in 1973 in Viet Nam where young A Tao is living what appears to be an idylic life with her father. But one day he is blown up by…

Warm Spring [暖春] (2003)

A nostalgic melodrama (and tearjerker) set in rural China in the 1980s. Xiaohua [Zhang Yan], a seven year old child, is found wandering near a remote village in northern China. It turns out that she has escaped from a nearby village. Her parents are dead and her foster parents have beaten her. When no-one offers…

The Taste of Rice Flower [米花之味] (2017)

A marked change in focus for director Pengfei from his first film set in subterranean Beijing (Underground Fragrance) to this movie set in a Dai village in Yunnan on the Chinese-Burma border. Ye Nan [Ying Ze who also co-scripted with Pengfei] returns home to the village to find the locals celebrating a highly inauthentic cultural…

Underground Fragrance [地下香] (2015)

Underground Fragrance (aka Beijing Stories in France) is the first feature of French-trained director Song Pengfei (billed as Pengfei). This short (75 minute) film tells the story of a number of migrants living in a run-down area in the Beijing suburbs. These include a middle-age couple Lao Jin and his wife [Zho Fuyu and Li…

Lost in Beijing [苹果] (2007)

This is one of the best Chinese films of the last 20 years. It's Li Yu's third film and her first to get a commercial release in China, albeit one fraught with censorship problems. Boss Lin [Big Tony Leung in outstanding form] is the owner of a large massage parlour in Beijing. With his Mercedes-Benz,…

Dam Street [红颜] (2005)

Li Yu's second film marked a strong contrast with her first though again the film focuses on women. Its a deeply moving account of life and relationships in small town China in the 1980s and 90s. Set in Sichuan (with much dialogue in Sichuan dialect) in the early 1980s, Yun [Liu Yi], a secondary school…

Fish and Elephant [今年夏天] (2001)

The first feature by one of my favourite directors Li Yu and probably the first mainland lesbian film. Unfortunately, the number of lesbian-themed films since can be counted on one hand and the number with a commercial cinema release is precisely zero. The film opens as Liu Xiaoqun's [Pan Yi] cousin, at the insistence of…

The Law of Attraction [万有引力] (2011)

An unusual portmanteau movie of four segments about love and attraction in 21st century Beijing all by director Zhao Tianyu (Lost, Indulgence). The opening section is by far the best, featuring a young Bai Baihe. Twenty six year old office worker Gao Yuan [Wen Zhang] flies to the oilfields in Yulin every week from Beijing…