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 student in the school where her mother Teacher Su [Li Kechun] works, becomes pregnant. When this is discovered, she and the boy, Wang Feng [Liu Rui], are expelled.

When the baby is born, her mother tells her it died and secretly arranges for the boy to be adopted by a teacher couple. But Wang’s older sister Wang Zhengyue [Wang Yizhu] adopts him, unknown to Su.

Ten years later (1993), Yun is a member of a local music group. She is an opera singer but the audience now prefers Teresa Teng songs and dancing girls. Her son Xiaoyong [Huang Xingrao] (of whom she is unaware) is a mischievous 10 year old in Teacher Su’s class.

The beautiful Yun is much in demand by the local men (mainly married), including the repulsive Boss Qian [co-writer and producer Fang Li], which leads to her being attacked on stage by one man’s wife and family. A quasi-Oedipal relationship develops between Yun and Xiaoyong who spies on her as she bathes. Later, her colleagues tease them for being a couple and make them drink a couple’s toast. But the secret of Xiaoyong’s parentage emerges to complicate lives.

The film is a highly credible and low key account of life in a small town in the period as Yun struggles to find her way in (although the film does not labour the point) a very patriarchal society.

Liu Yi (an actual Sichuan opera singer) is excellent in the role although she does not appear to have continued her film career. Indeed the entire cast are outstanding.

The film is much more coherent and looks much better than Fish and Elephant but retains Li Yu’s unique vision and perspective.