Meng ying tong nian

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!

Jiang Xian uses the complex backstory of Ling Ling and Mao Daobing to study Mao's "cultural revolution" (1966-1976) at the village level. The film has the elements and pace of Chinese opera and so appears slow and sometimes sentimental to the foreign viewer. But the movie provides a window onto contemporary life in China, with its focus upon villagers in the city, the consuming quality of subsistence--daily struggle, family and local cruelties--and the appeal of movies as escape, fantasy, and, ultimately, as source of community. This last is the most radical element in the film, for it suggests the modern--and universal--experience of culture will replace the insular Chinese traditions. The child actors are particularly fine.

During last year's visit to the Hong Kong International Film Festival, it gave me an opportunity to take in first hand and provide for some exposure to Chinese films, specifically those that were made in China. Amongst those that I've seen, I was blown away by the quality of storytelling and craft, and had wondered how soon after would I have the chance to watch something from China again, since our local cinemas don't really bring them in for mass consumption. Hence, this film festival was like a godsend, putting together some classics of the past, together with contemporary offerings from the new generation of directors. The Festival name might be a mouthful, but its objective is no doubt succinct - to introduce us to the magic of Chinese cinema once again.

Electric Shadows opens the festival, and by and large I've heard some really good things about it. The DVD has been available for some time already, but procrastination meant not picking it up, so having it screened as the opening film was no excuse anymore to miss it. And it's no surprise that I fell in love with director Xiao Jiang's first film, which is one with such a compelling story and fine acting, I would think one would likely have a heart of stone not to like it for some reason.

The film's opening introduces us to the character of Mao Dabing (Xia Yu), a water delivery boy who spends the bulk of his wages watching movies in the cinemas. I chuckled at this obvious identification, of someone spending his free time at the movies, and being completely lost in them as a form of escapism from the mundane repetitiveness and perhaps loneliness in his day job. While we follow his point of view for the most part at the beginning, that perspective shifted to a mute girl he encounters, who for no reason pounded his head with a brick, and destroyed his company sponsored bicycle. Persuaded to help her look after her fish while she has to inevitably get detained by the authorities, Dabing thought that he had reached seventh heaven when her apartment turned out to be one huge home theatre.

From there, the pace picks up, and we're transported to some 30 years back into the Cultural Revolution, and rewinds a little bit to the earlier generation. Electric Shadows has a bit of everything, even though some might like to compare it to Cinema Paradiso, I thought that this film had merits to stand on its own two feet despite the obvious comparison. It is its own movie, and while episodic, it never felt disjointed or had portions out of place, but gelled together seamlessly to weave an epic adventure of the story of a young girl Ling Ling, born at an outdoor cinema, and had cinema to be her companion during her formative years. As always, it's the mothers, here Jiang Xuehua (Jiang Yihong) an actress wannabe, who played a huge role in her appetite for films, and for her philosophy to lead a life with their heads held high because of her single parent status, leading to Ling Ling being quite a feisty little girl.

It was a time where film screenings were communal in attendance and experience, in small towns where close knit villagers have that as common mass entertainment. Electric Shadows managed to capture the social and cultural climate of the times, and best of all, had a tremendous number of clips to snapshot various cinematic oldies and gems that you would be tempted to check out should you have the opportunity to do so, one of which is Shining Red Star which will be screened this Saturday. Against this backdrop, Ling Ling leads quite an eventful life, where the pace catapults with the introduction of Mao Xiaobing (Wang Zhengjia), a scruffy kid from out of town whose mischievousness brings trouble, but for their love of movies which brought them together to be best frien uds forever, even though he prefers the action genre where he can make-belief he's the star of the show.

Electric Shadows is such a charming film that you'd find it hard to believe it's actually a first film, balancing drama, comedy and tragedy even with great aplomb, although there were some series of coincidences in the events and characters that you'll find it easy to ignore for the whole movie to work. It's strength also came from the wonderful cast who brought their likable characters to life, and you cannot find better chemistry between the cast members even when some of them take up the same characters albeit for different age groups. You'll feel for mother Xuehua in her resignation to the bad hand Fate had dealt her, you marvel at the dedication of Pan Daren (Li Haibin) the projectionist, you laugh and cry at the antics of the children, especially those of Xiaobing and Bing Bing (Zhang Haoqi) the kid brother who seemed to possess such maturity in his innocence.

It's been a long time since I was moved so immensely moved by a single film, and I'm glad that Electric Shadows shone brightly through and cemented its place in my mental list of all time favourite movies. With amazing cinematography and locales, and a score as performed by the China Philharmonic Orchestra, this is a must watch, a truly exquisite film to sit through, well worth your time and one for repeated viewings. I'm getting the DVD!

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.

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.