She, a Chinese
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | She, a Chinese |
| Country of production | United Kingdom , France , Germany , China |
| original language | English , Chinese |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Guo Xiaolu |
| script | Guo Xiaolu |
| production | Natasha Dack |
| music | John Parish |
| camera | Zillah Bowes |
| cut | Andrew Bird |
| occupation | |
| |
She, a Chinese is a 2009 film by Sino-British director Guo Xiaolu .
action
The youth Li Mei lives with her parents in a small village in China. There she helps her mother in the fields and around the house and supports her father in his work on a garbage dump. Their everyday life is largely monotonous and their prevailing boredom can only be broken by occasional flirtations. On the one hand there is a truck driver who regularly takes his lunch break in the village and occasionally invites Li Mei to the cinema. On the other hand, she meets a young man from the area who owns a scooter and earns his living selling illegal DVD copies . When he wants to get closer to her physically, she refuses, but asks him to give her his MP3 player. Since then, at least the music has given her a little variety.
The mother is not enthusiastic about these advances, as she has already chosen an administrative officer for her daughter as her future husband . She meets him for the sake of her mother, but is not very fond of the amateur photographer. One day the truck driver comes back to the village and pretends to invite Li Mei to the cinema. Instead, however, he drives her to a deserted area and rapes her.
The girl takes this as an opportunity to leave the village and go to the next largest city, Chongqing . There she initially works in a textile factory, but soon loses this position. She then ends up in a "hairdressing salon" whose customers also book the hairdressers as prostitutes. It is in this environment that Li Mei meets the gangster Spikey, who is out and about in a drug environment. The two become a couple, until one day Spikey is fatally injured. Li Mei then sets off with his money as part of a group trip to London.
She manages to break away from the tourist group. From then on she makes her own way. In a bar she meets the widower Geoffrey Hunt, who initially takes her in and then marries her so that she can legally reside in the United Kingdom. However, the two have hardly anything to say to each other - also because of the huge age difference - and life together seems rather bleak. Li Mei later falls in love with the snack bar owner Rachid, who is from India and is a Muslim. Here she can also meet her sexual needs and because she has had enough of living with Mr. Hunt, she decides to move in with Rachid and not return to Hunt. She becomes pregnant and when she tells Rachid, he says he wants to go back to India. He leaves Li Mei alone.
Awards
- 2009: Golden Leopard
Web links
- She, a Chinese in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Reviewed in the Guardian on February 25, 2010.
- She, a Chinese on filmstarts.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of award winners on pardo.ch , last accessed: August 20, 2017.