青红 Shanghai dreams

19-year old Qinghong has grown up in the poor Guizhou province, where her parents settled as part of a government initiative. Guizhou is where her friends are, where she first experienced love and where she wants to stay, but her increasingly bitter father dreams of the good life in Shanghai.


Wang Xiaoshuai's Cannes prizewinner is rooted in first-hand memories. In the late 60s, when China feared attack by the USSR, armament factories and other 'front line' industries were relocated from cities on the eastern seaboard to remote inland areas, and idealistic young adults were persuaded to resettle in dirt-towns like Guiyang to staff them. Less than 15 years later, many were desperate to move back to the urban sophistication of such cities as Shanghai, disillusioned by life in the sticks and eager to taste the new freedoms of the 80s. The Wu family is a case in point. The tough-love patriarch Zemin has never forgiven his wife for moving them to Guiyang and he's determined that their two children should put down no local roots; this means, amongst other things, sabotaging his daughter Qinghong's burgeoning romance with local factory worker Honggen. But Qinghong was born in Guiyang and knows no other home; talk of Shanghai makes her nervous and her father's intransigence brings out a sullen, rebellious streak. This is more or less the director's own life story, and he films it with absolute candour. Gao Yuanyuan and Li Bin (both from Beijing Bicycle) are affecting young leads, and Yan Anlian contributes a portrait of awesome belligerence as the father.