In distilling the life of one of the greatest (if not the greatest) Go players in history, Wu Qingyuan (Chen Chan) – an ethnic Chinese who immigrated to Japan (where he is referred to by the Japanese reading of his name, Go Seigen) in order to continue his pursuit of the game through officially sponsored […]
Tian Zhuangzhung’s Springtime in a Small Town is a visually sublime and nostalgic film that is somewhat reminiscent of Satyajit Ray’s exquisite Charulata in understatedly depicting the repercussions of emotional betrayal. The film takes place in the ruins of a large rural mansion in postwar China, as a physically fragile aristocrat (Wu Jun) is reunited […]
Tietou’s (Xiaoman Chen) young life has been affected by China’s political climate from the moment of his birth. His mother, a schoolteacher named Chen Shujuan (Liping Lu), and his father, a librarian named Lin Shaolong (Quanxin Pu), were compelled to delay their wedding plans out of reverence for the death of Joseph Stalin, and his […]
During the Cultural Revolution, Qinghong’s parents took up Mao Zedong’s call for a Third Line of Defense by relocating from Shanghai to work at factories on a rural outpost in the Guizhou Province. Years later, their ever-dimming hope of returning home has been re-channeled into the raising of their daughter, believing that their best prospects […]
In an early episode in 2046, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) – the international correspondent and aspiring wuxia novelist of Wong’s preceding film, In the Mood for Love (and now a struggling journalist and pulp writer of erotic serials) encounters a former acquaintance from Singapore named Lulu (Carina Lau) at a seedy nightclub on Christmas Eve, […]
There is a recurrent sound of a sensual waltz that accompanies each encounter between Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) as they invariably cross paths in a crowded residential complex: the first is a polite glance as Mo-Wan leaves the room of a friendly card game; and then during the subsequent encounters […]