Xu Fan Movies

Chinese filmmaker Chen Daming's ensemble comedy drama One Foot off the Ground opens with the plight a celebrated opera company, buckling under the weight of financial difficulties. When the troupe collapses for good, Daming cross-cuts between the lives of the laid-off performers, each of whom desperately attempts to pull in extra income with a "substitute job": one sells phony pure-bred dogs, another becomes implicated in questionable, underhanded business practices, a third shoots professional photographs for a living. Meanwhile, the dream of the opera company's reestablishment and reemergence lingers in all of their hearts. When a con artist turns up with the funds necessary to reestablish the ensemble, his cruel manipulation and willingness to quickly build up the hopes of everyone in the company throws the performers into a state of unbridled confusion, agony and despair. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A widowed father and his unhappy son try to find common ground in this controversial comedy-drama from China. Ma Linsheng (Feng Xiaogang) is a low-level government functionary who leads a worker's committee. Ma Linsheng doesn't care for his job, and ever since the death of his wife two years ago, he's been moody and out of sorts, trying to remain professional on the job while his frustrations rise to the surface during evenings shared with his teenage son Ma Che (Hu Xiaopei). While Ma Linsheng loves his son, he's not sure what to do for him, and wavers between trying to reach out to Ma Che and bawling him out. The tension isn't helping Ma Che, either at home or at school; hoping to make his father feel better (and give himself a bit more breathing room in the process), Ma Che tries to fix Ma Linsheng up with Qi Huaiyuan (Xu Fan), the mother of one of his friends, Tie Jun (Ye Qing). Baba was shot in 1995, but has yet to be released in China due to director Wang Shuo's battles with the Beijing Film Bureau, which objected to the film's disrespectful attitude toward government authority and its unflattering portrait of fatherhood. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A routine flight turns into a date with danger in this Chinese drama inspired by an actual incident. Airline pilot Li (Shao Bing) and his wife, a stewardess named Qiu Yehua (Xu Fan), have been quarreling and are dreading the next several hours together as they work the same flight travelling to Beijing from Shanghai. However, they have bigger things to worry about than their relationship when the landing gear falters, leaving them unable to land; aviation expert Liu Yuan (You Yong) tries to brainstorm a solution that will bring the 137 passengers on board safely to the ground, with only two hours to go before the jet's fuel runs out. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two Chinese expatiates living in California find their paths keep crossing, for good or ill, in the comedy Bu Jian Bu San/Be There Or Be Square. Li Quig (Xu Fan) is staying is Los Angeles and housesitting for a friend when a group of aspiring filmmakers, including Liu Yuan (Ge You), accidentally destroy the place. Liu lets her stay at his place, glamourously located in a trailer park, but they don't get along very well and he's hardly upset when she leaves, supposedly to return to Beijing. However, she never gets out of L.A., and over the next two years Li and Liu find they can't seem to avoid each other. In time enmity grows into a grudging friendship, but will a romance ever bloom for this mis-matched pair? Bu Jian Bu San/Be There Or Be Square reunites the stars (Xu Fan and Ge You) and director (Feng Xiaogang) of the 1997 Chinese hit Party A, Party B. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Gu Yan is a professional photographer who has come to the airport to send his wife off to Vancouver to learn English. She will be gone for a good long time, and after he sees her off, he is understandably morose. There in the airport lounge, while drinking a few beers, he meets Lin Zhouyan, who faints in his arms as her husband goes off for a similarly long stay overseas. The gentle busybody photographer takes her home with him to make sure she's all right - attentions she doesn't welcome. They soon part, but over the next months and years they continually run into each other. Eventually, they have become friends who trust one another. They decide to impersonate a man and wife in order to attend the Spring Festival, but at no point do they appear to be tempted to indulge in a sexual liaison. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide