Zhou Yu de huo che

"The way to a woman's heart is through a poem".....so it seemed in this visually stunning cinematic experience.

One eventful day, Zhou Yu a pretty painter from Sanming embarked on a train for trip. She chanced upon a handsome but shy aspiring poet, Chen Ching. He captivated her and soon captured her heart with his poem personifying her natural beauty and comparing it to that a celestial lake.

Soon they fell in love and began their twice weekly passionate affair while commuting to the city of Chongyang. But a fellow commuter named simply as Zhang Qiang, a veterinarian came in between the two lovebirds, with a secret amorous agenda of his own for Zhou Yu.

But this is more than just a love triangle!

A new woman named Xiu came into the scene. She looked exactly like Zhou Yu. But the scene took on a different era; a different time period. She was reading the book, "Zhou Yu's Train".

Is Zhou Yu a real person? Is Zhou Yu really was Xiu? Or is Zhou Yu a figment of Xiu's romantic imagination?

Be prepared for this surreal, non-linear movie experience.

Li Gong is just about the best thing ever to come out of China. No matter how many films I have seen featuring her, I am always impressed.

This is a difficult film to watch. You are never quite sure who you are watching. Li Gong is in a relationship with a poet (Tony Leung Ka Fai) and the practical vet (Honglei Sun). She travels by train between them.

But, are we watching events in real time or narrated? It seems that what we are seeing is in the past. That the poet, Chen Qing, has a current relationship, and only has Zhou Yu in his heart.

If this were an American film, then I believe it would probably be relegated to Lifetime, but with Li Gong, we have more than romance; we have poetry.

Li Gong, better known as Gong Li in the West, stars in this taut, probing but occasionally confusing love story set in today's China. Extraordinarily beautiful and also very accomplished as an actress, Gong Li is on a hiatus from historical spectacles and films with a threatening, for the government, political subtext. I doubt any cultural satrap was put out by "Zhou Yu's Train."

Zhou Yu paints bucolic and traditional scenes on cheap porcelain before they're finished and sent out to the world's Chinatowns or Chinese cities for sale to tourists. She's talented but so are all the other women in her shop. Great art this ain't.

Zhou Yu regularly takes the train to another city where her not brimming with self-confidence poet boyfriend, Chen Qing, lives. Chen is played by Tony Leung Kafai. On the train she meets veterinarian Zhang Quiang, Hanglei Sun. He pursues her and a triangle develops, not an original one at that.

Director Zhou Sun has Zhou Yu torn between a poet whose so far failed efforts at recognition she wishes to reinvigorate and advance and a country farm animal vet, a more lighthearted chap. The train is a metaphor for separation and emotional journeying. The train takes her between worlds, not just stations.

A bit confusing, at least with subtitles, is Gong Li's second role as a narrator who appears at various points but who also has a direct relationship, apparently platonic, with Chen. Perhaps it's clearer to those who understand Chinese.

While Gong Li has several passionate love scenes, she orgasms without getting undressed, a tired sop to Chinese moral values which impact on directors' freedom. A shower scene shows nothing below her shoulders. Erotic? Actually, very.

The highpoint of the movie is Gong Li's total and believable immersion in a role that isn't very out of the ordinary. But her acting makes the audience care about the resolution of her dilemma, one that I suspect many viewers will not like.

Tony Leung Kafai and Hanglei Sun turn in fine performances in roles clearly subordinated to Zhou Yu's centrality in the tale.

This story would amount to a "B" film if populated by Americans living in the rural Midwest. But as a look at changing mores in China it justifies a

7/10.

This film tells the story of a woman who is in love with a poet far away, while a vet near her attempts to win her heart.

"Zhou Yu's Train" is not told in a linear manner, and hence it's super confusing. All the time, I thought there were only three main characters, the woman, the poet and the vet. The story jump back and forth, and it's hard to piece together the fragments to make a coherent story. This is not helped by the slow pace, numerous scenes of train and railway tracks, dragging the film longer than it needs to be. The most confusing thing is the ending, I didn't understand it at all, until I read the message board that says there is in fact a fourth character, also played by Gong Li! The film lost me and my interest completely, and there is no turning back. It would help to understand the story if I watched it again, but I'm not watching it again for sure.

In comparison to most other Chinese movies, the title of this movie has very significant symbolic meaning, symbolizing the point of no return. It also has an poetic meaning, which neatly related to the plot of the movie which include a poet. This is one of most obvious achievement of this movie, which also makes it a little different from the rest of Chinese movies.

The social critic aspect of the movie is rather something ordinary, a theme that is common in most social critic films in contemporary China, and it is none other than the criticism of hedonism, materialism, and other common stuff you would find in Chinese movies about modern China.