The Foliage
Director: Lu Yue
Year: 2004
Rating:
5.0
Aka - Years Without Epidemic
This seems like a very odd choice for Shu
Qi to be the star of in 2004. She was a huge Hong Kong star by then with
one big commercial film after another and even getting some play outside
of Hong Kong with The Transporter in 2000 and the Taiwanese art film Millennial
Mambo in 2001. She had made a few obscure Taiwanese films around the same
time - Home in My Heart, Flying Dance, Hidden Whisper - but Taiwan was home.
This though is very much a low budget Mainland drama in which she plays a
solid patriotic citizen. Between So Close and The Eye 2, one might wonder
if this was reaching out to the Mainland govt by an actress from Taiwan.
Sort of saying, I can play the game. China was beginning to financially dominate
Hong Kong film and Shu Qi knew where the money was. Otherwise, I have no idea why she would take
this role. Not that there isn't some talent around the film - Joe Ma is the
producer and Lu Yue, cinematographer of Shanghai Triad and Red Cliff, is
the director. Later on he was to be behind the camera for two other Shu Qi
films, If You are the One I & II. Lu Yue definitely knows how to shoot
Shu Qi. Even though she is a poor simple girl, dressed in drab baggy army
green for most of the film, she is stunning.
It is nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution
in the mid 1970s and Ye Xing-yu (Shu Qi) is one of millions of urban youth,
who have been sent to rural areas to work. Termed the Sent Down Youth in
the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement. Re-education
of the urban educated. Over the years about 16 million youths were sent out.
Initially, it was voluntarily but then mandated. Many lived in impoverished
situations, many died. Another great idea from Mao.
This film is not really critical of this
at all. Nobody really wants to be there, but overall it is portrayed as an
adult summer camp, communal, co-ed, good friendships made, for the greatness
of the nation. Their mission seems to be cutting down a forest in the middle
of who knows where. It all seems pointless, but re-education is the point.
Xing-yu has just returned from a visit home where her father is paralyzed.
She wants to be released from her duties to take care of her father, but
doing so is a series of permissions at various levels. She is helped catching
a bus by Si-mong (Liu Ye), but he turns out to be something of a shady rebellious
character who runs a gang in a small town. Another one of Xing-yu's workmates
loves her and there is trouble ahead. Some of this is interesting in its
portrayal of that bit of Chinese history. What is strange is that 70 minutes
of the film takes place over two weeks and the final 20 minutes is over 20
years. But Shu Qi hardly ages. Thankfully.
