Competition
Xiu-Xiu - The Sent Down Girl
For her directorial debut, actress Joan Chen has followed the precedent
set by her friends and contemporaries among China's 'Fifth Generation'
directors: she has chosen a story from Mao's Cultural Revolution,
the vast social and political upheaval which brought the country ten years
of chaos between 1966 and 1976. Like everyone of her generation,
Chen found her entire existence redefined by the experience of living through
the Cultural Revolution. And like Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and others
before her, she faces the challenge of translating deeply personal feelings
about the period into terms the rest of us can understand.
Xiu Xiu , based on the story 'Heavenly Bath' by Yan Geling, is set
on the rolling plains between China and Tibet. It's 1975, the year before
the death of Mao and the overthrow of the Gang of Four will begin to return
the country to normality. Xiu Xiu (the 16-year-old Lu Lu) is one
of the 7-8 million zhiqing - urban teenagers taken out of their schools
and away from their families and sent to remote areas of the countryside
to 'learn from the people'. The particular person Xiu Xiu is supposed
to learn from is Lao Jin (Lopsang), a Tibetan horseman who seems closer
to his horses than to fellow humans.
Xiu Xiu's dawning realisation that she may remain stuck in Lao Jin's
tent for the rest of her life provokes a crisis in her sexuality. She begins
offering herself to the strangers who happen to pass by, hoping that one
of them will expedite her return to civilisation. Lao Jin watches silently
as she ruins her life...
From this simple but compulsive story, Chen has drawn a fable of unprotected
innocence lost, defiled... and perhaps regained. Tony Rayns
Synopsis
After achieving worldwide stardom in the role of Josie Packard in David
Lynch's cult TV series Twin Peaks, actress Joan Chen, who played in Red
Rose, White Rose, which was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 1994,
now makes her directorial debut. Xiu Xiu - The Sent Down Girl, an emotional
drama set in China at the time of the Cultural Revolution, is based on
an award-wining novella by Chinese novelist Yan GeLing. At the centre of
the tale is the girl Xiu-Xiu (Lu Lu). Like many other young people from
Beijing, she is sent to the provinces to help build the new China. Xiu-Xiu
follows her orders - to learn horse-herding from Lao Jin, a nomadic Tibetan.
She is told that after six months she will return to take charge of her
own all-girl cavalry unit. However, unknown to her, all these units have
in fact been disbanded. Xiu Xiu has simply been forgotten and left far
from home. She ends up sleeping with several men because she hopes that
this will help get her back home, but comes to realise that they are only
using her. This world where she will always be an outsider has broken her.
In her desperation she does not realise that the only man who has true
feelings for her is the herdsman.
(Dir): Joan Chen (Scr): Joan Chen, Yan Geling (Cast): Lu Lu, Lopsang,
Gao Jie, Lu Yue (Running time): 100 Minutes
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