The Pavilion [八角亭谜雾] (2021)

This is the latest in iQiyi's Light On series after a considerable break in 2021 and well worth watching. The production team deserve credit for putting together an interesting line up. Wang Xiaoshuai is credited as chief director (with TV drama director Hua Qing) while Duan Yihong and Hao Lei are amongst the actors. Wang…

Red Amnesia [闯入者] (2014)

Widow Deng Meijuan (Lv Zhong] is living alone in a Beijing apartment after the death of her husband to whom she still talks at meal times. She starts to get silent calls but the police do not take this seriously, thinking that she is probably imagining it. She is a typical Chinese mother calling unannounced…

Chongqing Blues [日照重庆] (2010)

Sea captain Lin Quanhai [Wang Xueqi] returns to Chongqing after 14 years, six months after the death of his 25 year-old son Bo. He learns that Bo [Wang Ziyi] was shot by the police after a taking a hostage in a shopping mall. Struggling to come to terms with the loss (though he has not shown…

Beijing Bicycle [十七岁的单车] (2001)

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…

Shanghai Dreams [青红] (2005) & 11 Flowers [我11] (2011)

Wang Xiaoshui is one of the more interesting directors to emerge in the early 90s. Unlike, Lou Ye he has tended to focus more on the past than the present. But like Lou, his output is erratic in terms of quality and he has found it difficult consistently to match the promise of his first…

‘A scene in the fog’: Sixth Generation films 1991-96

This note looks at a number of 'independent' films by Sixth Generation film makers from 1991-96 (given the lack of a formal release, dates often vary somewhat by a year or even two). Notwithstanding reservations about the generational approach to Chinese film-makers, the Fifth Generation perhaps shared a particularly close link as the first group…

So Close to Paradise [扁担·姑娘] (1998)

An impressive move to mainstream cinema by director Wang Xiaoshui (The Days, Frozen). This film (for Beijing Film Studio and co-produced by Tain Zhuangzhuang) had a long and tangled production history.  It was originally shot in 1994 but not released due to difficulties with the censor until 1998. The film, set in the 1980s, focuses…

So Long, My Son [地久天长]

Released: 2019 Viewed: January 2020 The film begins in Inner Mongolia in the early 1990s. Two young boys, Xingxing and Haohao, are playing beside a local reservoir. Later, although we do not discover exactly what happened till the end of the film, we see that Xingxing has been drowned in the reservoir. The leads to…