Red Beads

He Yi (aka He Jianjun) raised money privately to make this underground feature without official approval, and the film fully reflects the resulting freedom from constraints. A pallid guy waiting for his date in a noisy restaurant daydreams a situation in which he works as a lonely orderly in a mental hospital. He grows obsessed with the young woman patient who is already dreaming of red beads and gradually enters her delusions - if that's what they are. Hard to say if this is jet-black comedy or expressionist nightmare. Either way, it's an amazingly provocative vision by Chinese standards. It's also highly atmospheric, persuasively felt and eerily erotic.