更新时间:2009-05-27
GEORGE • 红河:每周影评：红河
For my movie review this week I have selected a made-in-China yet exotic movie called 'Red River'.
Red River tells the story of a Vietnamese girl named A Tao, who, at the age of four, becomes traumatized after witnessing her father being killed by an American land mine.
Twenty years later she becomes an illegal immigrant in a Chinese border town and finds work at a massage parlor. While working there, she finds true love with a middle-aged Chinese man, and ultimately gets into trouble with the Vietnamese mafia.
The director Zhang Jiarui bases the story in a small Chinese town bordering Vietnam where the beautiful landscape meets unique and varied culture. In the historical context of the early 1990s, every detail in the movie - i.e. the songs, the costumes, even the bank notes - helps bring a remote yet genuine border town in South China to the big screen. The film is aesthetically pleasing enough to placate for its other shortcomings.
Zhang Jingchu, a rising movie star in Chinese mainland, plays the role of A Tao. Her masterful and thorough performance is nothing short of captivating. The glorious star, often appearing on fashion magazines and posing for cameras on red carpets, plays a mentally handicapped while truly adorable girl in this film. The sharp contrast in her personae serves to blow the audience away.
However, if the fine acting deserves laurels, the screenplay resembles more a thorny rose. The laggard storyline and the abrupt ending render the movie seemingly unfinished. The early potential of the movie is unfortunately left unrealized and is conclusively insufficient.
On my movie scale between 1 and 10, I am giving Red River a 6.5.
