Perspectives
Dir. Fabien Gaillard

This is a movie about the guy who went too far in the direct and (as many would say) indirect sense of the word. Paul from Limoges is a young man of about 30. He has been living in Shanghai for a long time now, he speaks Chinese fluently and introduces himself as Da Bao, although his round European peasant face won’t cheat anyone as far as his origins are concerned, especially when he rides his bike among steaming pots with fragrant foods in his woolen cap pulled over his ears and a tight jacket like some character from the early videos of “Pet Shop Boys”. He has accepted China as his new motherland but he is not bent on Eastern practices and even his first falling-out with his new girlfriend arises because, in his opinion, the food she cooks for him is too spicy and too Eastern. Actually, it is the familiar story about the love of the Brave Tin Soldier. He makes his living offering computer assistance, but exclusively as a freelancer. When his former sweetheart invites him to a party in the hope of introducing him to an over-dressed lady boss of a big company and talking about his permanent job, he will get drunk, bawl out songs, fall asleep and turn the job interview into an ugly farce. When another company fails to transfer the money to his credit card on time he will turn up at the office and kick up another brawl shoving business papers to the floor. It is right, work must be paid for and he is not going to work.

In this movie nobody cares for the everyday routine, neither the camera, nor he, nor his girlfriend Mei played by Dan Tong Han whose striking model appearance is enough to make everyone forgive her hysterics and bouts of depression facing the wall and for whose smile one is ready to pay a million. But instead it is very important to observe what exercises the aged from the health group are doing in the park today, what pensioners are playing backgammon in the yard and to see the expression on the faces of working guys coming home on the ferry across Yangtze this evening. The latter episode will take place when the action shifts to Wǔhàn, deeper into the mainland, where Mei's family home is and where she will escape having suspected her bridegroom of unfaithfulness. His watch by the princess’s palace will come down to his daily appearances in Wǔhàn 's street karaoke with his own songs.

It is a movie in which the denial of present-day corporate and social priorities in favor of non-violent but stubborn pursuit of one’s own immediate interests is the way to achieve the very basic and fundamental priority – the real noisy family dinner party where everyone is at one with everyone else. And besides it is a film where we hear the phrase: “To gain something you must first lose it, to get something first let it go; just like smoking a cigarette: when I smoke it, look, I let it go”. Cigarette smoke floats over the sleepy Yangtze and the utterance liners in thin air as a worthy object of deep meditation: after all, despite the director’s French name it is an utterly Chinese film.

AlexeY Vasiliev