Zhang Heng Movies
- 2008
A generation of young adults ponder their friendships, loves, expectations, and life ambitions while wandering the streets of a city that evolves at a faster rate than they mature in Dutch director David Verbeek's three-tiered look at life in the contemporary Chinese city of Shanghai. The first tale, a melancholy meditation on lost love, follows intelligent country-boy Xu Yu as the object of his affections drifts away after becoming enamored by the world of the nouveau riche and moving into a wealthy new district. Later, night owl hipsters Jenny and her boyfriend Calvin, a popular nightclub DJ, are troubled to learn just how temporary and vulnerable their vapid lifestyle truly is. The final story follows Dutch architect Jochem as he relocates to Shanghai and becomes enamored with an elegant and ambitious beauty named Zhang Yi. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tygo Gernandt, Tian Yuan, (more)
Sun Zhou's stylized Zhou Yu de Huoche (Zhou Yu's Train) is the story of a woman in love. Zhou Yu (Gong Li) and teacher Chen Ching (Tony Leung Kar-Fai) fall in love. After Ching gives Zhou a poem he wrote for her, she begins taking a train ride twice a week to his home in order to have sex with him. During her time on the train, she strikes up a relationship with a veterinarian (Sun Honglei), but she ends their time together when she learns that he spied on her during one of her visits with Ching. Gong Li has a second role as a another woman obsessed with Chen who is trying to ascertain the nature of his relationship with Zhou. This film was shown out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gong Li, Tony Leung Kar-Fai, (more)
- 2002
- NR
- Add Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to QueueAdd Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to top of Queue
Dai Sijie directs Balzac et La Petite Tailleuse Chinoise (The Little Chinese Seamstress), a film adaptation of his own best-selling autobiographical novel. Set in China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, the story follows Luo (Chen Kun) and Ma (Liu Ye), two young men from the city who are sent to a mountain village for a re-education in Maoist principles. They work with the peasants under the supervision of the village head man (Wang Shuangbao), who considers their violin to be a symbol of the bourgeoisie. Luo and Ma both fall in love with the little Chinese seamstress (Ziiou Xun), the daughter of the tailor (Chung Zhijun), and they read her forbidden works of Western literature including French writers Balzac and Dumas. The conclusion finds the two men reminincing about their experiences 30 years later. Balzac et La Petite Tailleuse Chinoise premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
