Meng ying tong nian

1st watched 4/2/2009 – 7 out of 10 (Dir-Xiao Jiang): Well delivered, emotional story about a girl, her ups & downs in her life, and how movie viewing and movies in general, were involved in the whole process. The main character is introduced at the beginning of the film after a paper boy runs into a stack of bricks in an alley and is assaulted by the girl for some reason. When he awakes from his injury, he wants to find out why she did this and looks for her. When he finds her, she doesn't tell him why she did this(she also can't hear, it appears) but asks him to take care of and feed her fish – knowing she's going away. He doesn't really want to do this, but as her enters her apartment where she lives he discovers a mini theatre-like room with a diary that he begins reading. The diary reveals the life of the girl and the movie then really begins as we discover what her life was like. The story of her and her family revolves around an outdoor theatre that the local townfolk come to in the evenings. Her mom announces the evening event through a loud speaker and becomes associated when the man who plays the films. Her mom wanted to be a movie star or singer but after bearing a child(the main character) out of wedlock is shunned by the locals and her dreams disappear. The rest of the movie follows the young girls friendships made and lost and the history of the outdoor theatre that eventually closes down due to the invention of television. The daughter is told early in life that her real father is a movie star(which is not true) but this also keeps her fascinated to the screen. The movie is wonderful at how it displays this story and the various characters although it is sad at various times, but if you are looking for an interesting and compelling and sensitive story about real life you will enjoy this one.

ELECTRIC SHADOWS is such a little treasure that I want to plug it in to every film lover I know. The comparison to Italy's "Cinema Paradiso" is apt in the most important way because it's all about how movies enrich the life of a child. In other ways, the film is so vastly different from writer/director Giuseppi Tornatore's lovely work, which is quintessentially Italian: big with emotions, architecture, color, performance, length and budget. In this short and seemingly simple Chinese film, lack is everywhere, from the missing father to the lives these characters lead: where they live and work, what they have to eat and how they get around (the bus in which sister escorts her baby brother is a perfect case in point).

Yet thanks to a style that is warm, honest, rich and--especially--gentle, a story full of quite awful happenings is told in such a way that whatever director/co-writer Jiang Xiao offers us, including some pretty heavy coincidence, we gratefully accept because all of it works beautifully toward her goal of celebrating film, family and friendship. Her achievement is all the more surprising because the movie--her first, and filmed, it would appear, on an awfully small budget--starts out simply and charmingly then quietly builds until it reaches a conclusion that ties everything together without a whiff of heavy-handed melodrama or overkill. In the Special Features, the director explains her purpose, how she came to film-making, and her hope to do something worthy for the major anniversary of Chinese film. I can't imagine a better gift to the country, its growing film industry, or the widening world of international film lovers. Enjoy!

Electric Shadows (2005)

With sweeping camera-work, beautiful scenery in several locations in China, and a heartwarming and heartbreaking story of two children trying to make their lives make sense amidst lots of upheaval, "Electric Shadows" makes a great first impression. For movie lovers it works intrinsically, and then it adds another compelling layer--the title refers to movies themselves, and there is scene after scene of makeshift outdoor theaters and crowds of people watching domestic films. It's a highly romanticized bowing down to the art form.

It's also an attractive way to see the changing currents in Chinese politics, as seen by the common people in the last forty or so years as the Cultural Revolution went through its paces. The events on and off screen echo, with almost storybook precision, the main moods and events of those times.

I found all of this stunning at first, and then I started to get little hints that it was all a bit obvious, and then, as the plot continued to play with both the troubles of these cute kids growing up and with the changing tastes and types of movies shown, I grew restless and irritated. And to grow irritated at such a finely made love story is troubling all by itself.

The ability to make a superb looking movie these days is within reach of anyone with a budget. There is no sense that it takes a hugely specialized set of talented technicians and actors to pull it off, as was far more true fifty or even thirty years ago. And the down side to that rears its gnarly head here--this is a movie that should have done more and said more.

"Electric Shadows" plays so loosely with clichés of meaning and clichés of beauty, it ends up being the very thing it most wants to avoid. A sensation. A glimmer on a flat screen, an electric shadow. The magic is only in the surface, and the more beautiful and compelling it seems to be the more you want it to dig in and go somewhere with sincerity and depth.

I'm not entirely sure why I passed on this film when it landed in my city. Perhaps it was a busy schedule or perhaps it was the blatant comparison to the Italian "Cinema Paradiso" in the advertising used for this film.

With all due respect to the "CP", while the two films share an early common thread of a young child with a passion for movies (with a requisite "single mom" in a small town), these two films should not really be compared side by side. The desire and temptation toward comparison would be deceptive and misleading to most expectations of most potential viewers. Indeed, they are very different stories. Nor should "CP" used as a benchmark for all films which have a child character that enjoys going to the movies. Not that it isn't without merit, but, rather, again, this is a different film with a very different feel. The Italian film was meant to have a big emotional bang; this Chinese film, however, goes the restrained route of slow, emotional realization.

We meet our heroine, Ling Ling, as she commits what appears to be an act of senseless violence-- striking a bicycle-riding man on the head with a brick. Then as the wounded victim (Mao Dabing) confronts his assailant we are utterly confounded by her silent, dogged insistence that he go to her apartment and feed her fish-- it is she who should be owing him redress, not vice versa. Dumbfounded, the victim agrees and there begins a journey back into the events that led up to Ling Ling's seemingly incomprehensible action against him. It is this backward shift of gears that forces a discovery of character revelation which goes beyond a simple childhood love of film.

As Dabing sifts through Ling Ling's possessions (most notably her diaries), he comes to learn how life sometimes has a peculiar way of coming full circle; events which may seem random and senseless are not always necessarily what they seem to be. And, in many ways, as the plot unfolds, this is actually a small film about forgiveness and reconciliation. In this respect, it seemed vaguely reminiscent of the Chinese film "Seventeen Years".

Enjoyable little film -- a tale of family, friendship, loss, and reconciliation-- which should be allowed to stand on its own merits and not be unnecessarily thrown into a comparison with other films for the sake of marketing. This a decidedly Chinese film.

ELECTRIC SHADOWS is the delightfully charming debut from the Chinese director, Xiao Jiang. Her film asserts that there is a wondrous and remarkable connection between the mystery of dreaming and film appreciation. In Chinese, 'electric shadows' is the literal translation for the word 'cinema'. The characters in this film have an intense emotional attachment for motion pictures, and their lives have been shaped and guided by the movies they love. The rather strange storyline concerns a bicycle delivery driver who crashes his bike and is assaulted by a mysterious young woman. She is apprehended, and allows him to stay in her apartment to feed her fish. Within her apartment is a shrine to the Golden Age of Chinese motion pictures. During his stay, he discovers the girl's diary, and then the film becomes a flashback about how she came under the spell of the cinema. ELECTRIC SHADOWS is a marvelous mix of drama, comedy and tragedy with several young children in leading roles who effectively portray the innocence and delight of childhood. ELECTRIC SHADOWS is an alluring and enthralling melodrama which interprets the irresistible power of film.