Pu Quanxin Movies
- 1998
Zhang Yang directed this $200,000 Chinese anthology film, opening on a yin-yang-decorated soup-pot shared by a Beijing couple. A soupcon of scenes with this couple serves to link several stories on the theme of love and marriage: a kid creates problems with parents and teachers by faking a recording; an elderly widow has her choice of men after she appears on a television dating show; a bored couple share a childish fascination for amusing toys; a boy discovers his parents have just divorced; and a romance is described via voiceovers. Cameo by Tiawanese singer-composer Li Tsung-sheng. Shown at the 1998 East West Film Festival (London). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pu Quanxin, Lu Liping, (more)
- 1995
- PG
This award winning Chinese drama examines the actions of a shy and quiet misanthrope who slyly begins meddling in others' lives. The film is set within an aging apartment block in Beijing. Xiao Dou has been cared for by his sister since their parents died many years ago. Anxious to begin living her own life, his married sister tries to find a match for Xiao Dou. She has yet to succeed. Xiao Dou works for the Post Office as a letter box installer. He is reassigned to delivering mail in the Happiness District mail after the former mailman was caught reading the letters he was supposed to deliver. Intrigued by that, and by the games played by the postal clerk Yun Qing who tries to discover the contents of letters, Xiao Dou begins to secretly open the mail. This leads him to get involved in the dramas of people's lives. For example, when a boy commits suicide, Xiao Dou delays sending the letter to his parents who patiently wait to hear from their son. Xiao Dou's most difficult drama involves the relationship between to homosexual drug addicts. All of their lives forever change when the postman gets directly involved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
This film, set in rural China offers Westerners a rare glimpse of Chinese rural life. It focuses on the life and loves of Zyuko, a Japanese teenaged girl abandoned in China immediately after World War II. She ends up marrying the Chinese officer who adopted her. Together they set out on foot to an isolated village in central Yunnan province. Her husband does not survive the trip and she is forced by tribal custom to marry his younger brother, Xia Lou. Eventually she accepts the marriage and settles down to a happy life filled with children and friends. In 1949, during the Cultural Revolution, Triumphant Communists attempt to deport her. After 40 years in China, she returns to Japan to attend an emotional class reunion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lu Xiuling, Lin Jianhua, (more)
Tian Zhuangzhuang, a charter member of China's politically beleaguered, so-called Fifth Generation of Directors (along with Ju Dou's Zhang Yimou), made this film about the gradual disintegration of an entire family targeted by Mao's political reformation movements of the '50s and '60s. Told in a series of three stories, the audience sees the little boy Tietou and his mother try and try again to rebuild their lives from the ashes left them by the madness of the era. Director Tian works from a palette of primary colors on widescreen images that are often fixed in an icy-white Kubrickian glare of omnipresent paranoia. Yet much of The Blue Kite is resplendent with palpable signs of ordinary life: noisy kids, happy weddings, loud mealtimes. Tian amplifies the human element of these heady days, so that viewers may genuinely feel the humanity ripped from this story as events overtake and shatter all hope. ~ Tom Keogh, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lu Liping, Pu Quanxin, (more)
