China Is Near

A stinging political satire which bears the same bizarre hallmarks as Fists in the Pocket. Once again the protagonists are a family, and once again they live a secret life as mysteriously inaccessible as that of the epileptics in Bellocchio's earlier film. But this time they are out in the world, with older brother busily pursuing a political career, younger brother touting for Mao in hopes of ruining his brother, and sister squatting at home indulging lazy love affairs. They are upper middle class and the world is theirs; but the day of reckoning is at hand, and in a brilliantly funny series of sexual encounters, elder brother and sister find themselves bemusedly trapped into marriage by a pair of working class secretaries on the make. A dazzling and curiously foreboding comedy of manners, it shares with Godard's La Chinoise a sense of May 1968 just around the corner.