Film

Shanghai Dreams (2005)

Director: Wang Xiaoshuai

Movie review

From Time Out London

Guiyang, 1983, is not at the cutting edge, to put it mildly: capital of Guizhou province but with the look and feel of a rural outpost, it has little to offer the Wu family other than a nest of simmering resentments. The regrettable decision to move there from Shanghai two decades earlier – as part of a government scheme aiming to relocate metropolitan expertise to the interior in case of attack – has eaten the marriage of Zemin (Yan Anlian) and his wife Meifen (Tang Yang) away from the inside, leaving him stubborn, bitter and over-protective of their children. For their part, teenage Qinghong (Gao Yuanyuan) and her younger brother (Wang Xiaofan) have grown up in limbo, indefinitely primed for a return to a ‘home’ they’ve never seen.

It’s little surprise, then, that Qinghong’s relatively mild attempts to assert adult independence, especially a potential romance with a local factory worker, are met with self-righteous, self-fulfilling fury. Director Wang Xioashuai – whose previous work, including 2001’s ‘Beijing Bicycle’, has mined a similar vein of disaffection with the realities of the Chinese state – draws on his own family history to create a downbeat but humane portrait of lives in which individual agency is the stuff of dreams. Our sympathies lie with Qinghong – Gao does a fine, expressive job with often understated dialogue – but Yan ensures that even as Zemin’s authoritarianism grates, the sincerity of his concern is never in question.

The tragedy is that both generations are justified in their grievances; and, mirroring China’s tentative moves towards political rapprochement, both look to the West for a hint of relief. Zemin tunes his radio to Voice of America, while a certain amount of kitschy pathos is drawn from Guiyang youth culture’s belated attempts to get hip: bell-bottoms and Boney M are all the rage and, if the local lothario’s duds and moves are anything to go by, at least one copy of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ must be in circulation. Wang and director of photography Wu Di achieve a spare, grounded look using natural light and long, steady takes of eye-level compositions. There’s little music and the few flashes of colour – such as Qinghong’s red shoes – attract unwelcome attention. It’s a muted, austere aesthetic utterly in keeping with the stunted, frustrated worlds of those it depicts.

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