Director: Wang Xiaoshuai
Script.: Wang Xiao-shuai, Pang Ming
Cinema.: Tang Tao
Edit.: Liu Fang, Yang Hong-yu
Sound: Li Wei
Music: Liu Lin
Art. Dir.: Cheng Guang-ming
Cast.: Wang Tong, Shi Yu, Guo Tao, Wu Tao
Production: Beijing Film Studio, Beijing Goldenpiate Film TV and Art Prod.
Distribution:
Ad Vitam
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75011 Paris
tél. : 01 46 34 75 74
fax : 01 46 34 75 09
[email protected]
Année : 1998
35 mm, Color, 98 min, Mandarin Chinese with French subtitles
Un Certain Regard Cannes 1999
The economic reform in the eighties allowed many Chinese farmers to leave their region for big cities. This is how Gao Ping and his young brother Dong Zi had huge dreams when they leave their native village for Wuhan, a city in Central China. Don Zi finds a job in the docks and Gao Ping becomes a swindler. Fatty, who belongs to the powerful local mafia, rips the young man off. With his brother Dong Zi’s help he decides to kidnap his mistress Ruan Hong, a night club dancer. Both young men fall in love with her. The film is a pessimistic vision of China’s fast urbanization accommodating an exiled rural population not armed for such new life leading to all kinds of excesses.
“So Close to Paradise” is Wang Xiaoshuai’s debut feature (and his third film) produced by an official studio it got selected by Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival in 1999.
