Zhou Yu de huo che

This motion picture defines the word "artsy". A film about a young and pretty porcelain painter who falls in love with a shy and melancholic poet (played by Sun Honleig), it aims to be a poetic work, but what you get is lots of ralenti shots to the point of saturation, piano and strings music, pretty landscapes enshrouded in fog, trains entering and exiting tunnels and Gong Li... In the past Miss Gong inspired true poetic films, as those directed by Zhang Yimou, but this movie is not one. Tony Leung plays another suitor, a sympathetic veterinarian with a welcome sense of humor, too materialistic to understand romantic love and literary inspiration, and wise to keep a distance, but not enough to balance this melodrama, with too much emphasis on sad love. I love trains, but this trip is on the boring side.

Quite simply one of the best films ever made! Every element combines to produce a multi-layered masterpiece that revolves around the central tour-de-force that is Gong Li. This has to be her best film yet and she is wholly served by her fellow actors and production crew. Director Sun Zhou is a master of light with every scene's mood enhanced by his total control of the medium. One would like to have seen this film win multiple awards but the limited number of screens available to 'difficult' films like this make it nearly impossible to attain the recognition it deserves. Equally, Gong Li - the world's most beautiful and accomplished film actress - remains unknown to the unhappy teenagers who have only a diet of dross on which to feed their heads.

Poetic, delicate, subtle. European film with Oriental irisations. Story about love and desire, about power of images and the honey of illusions. Cercles of symbols and chimeric gestures. Time like far lake and the past like only form of present. And a feminine Adonis between two different worlds.

The character of Li Gong is a magnificent miniature not of a sensitive age or ambiguous feelings but for a way to define the existence. A way to explore each miracle as part of a sacred refuge, a river-trip. The train and the travels to loved friend, the poems and the house like essential sanctuary of a wonderful past, splendid for his ambiguity, the talks with realistic, sarcastic man for who the dreams are only offals of lost age and Zhou Yu- a pretty prey.

For this film, the gestures or words are pieces of intense atmosphere. The search of truth is element of personal religion, the love- delicate shard of beautiful pot. The answers- breath of wind in a spring day. And the time- huge shadow of a way.

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.

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.