Long cheng zheng yue

"Dragon Town Story" is such a simple title but what lies beneath is a wonderful story about love and life. The film is filled with terrifically real performances, memorable music, and can best be described as sheer visual poetry. Sometimes, subtitles can be a bit distracting, especially if they come up so quick that you need an Evelyn Wood diploma to keep up with the dialogue, but this WASN'T the case here. I think that the subtitles might have actually enhanced the film for me.

The movie is in Cantonese, a language that I am not familiar with, yet even the sound of the words had a rich, lyrical quality to them. Maybe this added to the mystique...

Don't know if it was the lighting, make-up, directing expertise, or his lead actress' natural beauty, but director Fengliang Yang captured a moment in time as the silver screen has arguably never seen a more angelically beautiful face than that of Chien-lien Wu in this film. Those eyes...those lips!!! Any man with a pulse could not help but be infatuated with her stunning screen presence..

Mr.Yang has not directed another film since making this masterpiece. It is unbelievably SAD that "Dragon Town Story" has not found its way to video or DVD, especially since Chinese heavyweight director Zhang Yimou was the executive producer of the project.

I knew nothing about this film upon entering the theater so had no idea of what to expect. This made it only that much sweeter. Just soaked it all in, and was simply mesmerized...so, I will provide NO plot outlines, NO specifics...PLEASE experience this movie as I did!

This film is only one of four that have ever merited a "10" in my book (80+films rated on IMDb with two id's plus thousands of films that I never bothered to cast official votes for) I feel incredibly fortunate to have experienced this magnificent piece of work at the 2005 San Francisco Asian Film Festival. I sincerely hope that one day, you will be afforded the same opportunity.

The plot is of a grief stricken woman who stalks her family's murderers, a common motivation in Chinese period pictures. Sumptuously photographed, slow moving and carefully precise in its period detail, this one is nonetheless very different from the type of film that typically inhabits this genre. Most significant is its evocation of its setting. Despite the opening massacre that drives its plot, the period evoked is not one of chaotic lawlessness and pervasive evil, but rather one in which ordinary people live ordinary lives and want ordinary things. Sometimes sudden violence enters the lives of such people, notably the main character played by Wu Chien Lien. I'm a big fan, and this is some of her best work. The character is basically a good person driven by and conflicted over a desire to revenge that is both beneath and ennobled by her. Her pain drives her to seek vengeance, but she is ever its reluctant agent. Too often in this sort of picture we watch a supposedly normal character morph into the Terminator following a lesser trauma than that faced by Wu. Here, what would have been a straight-forward revenge mission is continuously side-tracked by the unpredictable results of the interactions of the characters. Here again is a huge difference: necessities of plot do not contrive to move the characters along, but rather character serves to untrack plot. How often does that happen? Wu finds herself in very unfamiliar terrain as an agent of vengeance and reacts and interacts with this in moving and unexpected ways. The result is a very unique, difficult to predict and generally engrossing piece of period moviemaking.

The movie opens with a wedding scene. The bride hides in waiting for her groom to appear but when the wedding sedan arrives, her betrothed is not inside but a killer who guns down her entire family. As the sole survivor, she spends the next 9 years plotting revenge. This leads her into a liaison with an assassin who falls in love with her. Posing as a married couple, they become acquainted with their mark and his family. Revenge turns out to be less sweet than expected.

This story is a rather touching look at forgiveness despite all the bloodshed.

Wu Chien-Lien (Jacqueline Wu), who earlier appeared in the more famous Eat Drink Man Woman, is gorgeous as always. The movie was produced by Zhang Yimou in the same year he did Red Sorghum.

This film seems to have slipped through the festival cracks, but is a beautifully photographed and expertly acted treatise not only on bloodlust, revenge and, ultimately, regret; but on preconceived notions leading people (audience included) far more astray than they can imagine.

Set during the collapse of the last Chinese Dynasty, the sole survivor of her family's massacre hires an assassin to murder the rival clan leader responsible for the slaughter.

One of the film's many characteristic, but unpredictable twists is that the leader's son falls in love with her and "asks" that she come to their home to pose for a portrait, thereby bringing her into intimate contact with a family she professes to hate.

No one in this film is what they seem, including the hired assassin who poses as her husband.

If you can find it, see it.