Summary
By the time a movie has made the journey from the far corners of the world to American art-house screens, we pretty much take it for granted that this is going to be a treat. It's surprising, then, and in a curious way a bit reassuring, to find a vapid, uninspired picture like Zhou Yu's Train rolling into our station.
It is more surprising still when you consider that the movie stars Gong Li (The Story of Qiu Ju, Shanghai Triad), the reigning queen of Chinese cinema. She plays the dual roles of Zhou Yu, an artist in a porcelain factory, and Xiu, about whom I can't tell you very much except that she's the narrator and she has shorter hair. It is not even completely clear from much of the movie that these are in fact two different characters, since they're both obviously Gong Li. I found myself guessing that it was the same character in different time contexts and trying to figure out what those contexts were. But it turns out that Xiu is a separate character, and one who has also had a relationship with Zhou Yu's lover, the poet who wrote a bookof verse called Zhou Yu's Train. Once you get this, you then have to wonder if the whole story is in Xiu's head. Or maybe you will no longer care.See the full content of this document
Extract
Zhou Yu's Train Poetry in Slow-Motion
The train of the title takes Zhou Yu from Sanming, the northern industrial city where she lives, to the rural town of Chongyang, where her lover lives. Her lover is Chen Qing (Tony Leu...
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