Something like Jia Zhang-ke’s portraits of contemporary China by way of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s stationary long shots and sense of landscape, Good Cats returns to the hybrid fiction of Ying Liang’s previous film, The Other Half to capture the dislocation and moral vacuum left in the wake of China’s rapid economic development. Similar to The Other […]
In its fractured, interpenetrating (or rather, colliding) realities, Ying Liang’s The Other Half foreshadows Jia Zhang-ke’s 24 City, capturing China’s transforming industrial landscape through its alienated and displaced humanity. The opening frontal shot of job seeker, Xiaofei being interviewed by an off-camera recruiter establishes a sense of division – the unseen economic, social, educational, and […]