2003

Director:  Zhang Yuan
Camera: Christopher Doyle
Production: Asian Film Union, Yan Gang
Cast: Jiang Wen, Zhao Wei, Fang Lijun, Wang Haizhen, Yang Dong, Zhang Yuan, Mi Qiu, Li Long, Zhang Chi
Scenario:  Jin Renshun, Zhang Yuan, based on Jin Renshun's short story Adiliya by the River
Editor: Wu Yixiang
Production Design: Han Jiaying
Sound:  Wu Lala
Music:  Su Cong

Running time: 83’

Elegant and confusing film by Zhang Yuan (East Palace, West Palace) about a man who becomes intrigued by a young and pretty unworldly student, who bears a striking resemblance to the fashionable nightclub singer he later meets in a bar. Delightful camerawork by master photographer Chris Doyle.<p"> 

Wu Fong (Zhao Wei, also known from Shaolin Soccer), is a clever young student and bookworm, who always consults the green tea leaves when she first meets a man. So she also does this when she has a blind date with the dissolute Chen Mingliang (the well-known Chinese actor going Jiang Wen, director of Devils on the Doorstep). But this coffee drinker derides her ritual and says he already knows all about what there is to know about women. Despite this disappointing first encounter, more follow, meetings in which the two come closer together or at least find common interest, in which she is reticent and he is macho. Chen meanwhile has more need to prove his manhood and thinks he has found his prey in the exuberantly dressed and compliant Langlang (also played by Zhao Wei). The necessary vicissitudes ensue...

Zhang Yuan, whose films are well known for their realistic, almost documentary style, certainly takes a different path here.  Helped by the striking photography of Christopher Doyle (whose camerawork can also be admired during the festival in Ashes of Time) he presents a colourful, impeccably lit series of scenes, in which male-female relations are shaped in a fresh, intimate and occasionally slightly comic way.

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