Keep Cool

Cut off from foreign financing by China's new Film Regulations, Zhang did the smart thing by making this low budget quickie primarily for domestic release. It's his first contemporary urban movie, his first comedy and his first without Gong Li. The great Jiang Wen plays a bookseller who won't accept that his hip young girlfriend has left him for someone richer. The first half details his attempts to confront her (he can't remember which of a thousand identical apartments she lives in); the second his wait with murderous intent in a restaurant, refusing to be pacified by a stranger whose new laptop he has broken. With ultra-mobile handheld camerawork and no pre-blocking of the scenes, Zhang achieves a spontaneity new in his work. But it's Jiang's performance which makes the film astonishing and funny.