Sweet Food City

Mei Shi Cun

(China, 2007, 80 mins)

BetaSP

International (Redux version) Premiere

PROD/SCR: Gao Wendong
CAM: Li Chao
EDS: Gao Wendong, Li Chao
MUS: Shang Shu, Wang Wen, Cai Qin
Cast: Chao Quan, Huang Jinbo

Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.

Recut and resubtitled since its premiere in Berlin, Gao Wendong’s debut feature makes brilliant use of cinematic space. In the extraordinary setting of Dalian’s Sweet Food City, a housing/shopping development of the 1990s which is already a massive slum, two old acquaintances meet through a bag-snatching incident. The man is Sanbao, a jobless chancer who once worked as a barber, and the woman is Tingting, a tough hooker who is looking for a new base of operations because the cops drove her off her old patch. These two have an on-off affair, not much complicated by the arrival of Sanbao’s father, who lives by scavenging in garbage for recyclables. Like most residents of Sweet Food City, they all have dead-end lives.

Plenty of other Chinese indie movies have looked at characters left behind by China’s “economic miracle.” What makes this one so different--and so exciting to watch--is Gao’s film language. Here is a director who thinks in 3D: every shot is interesting spatially, and many feature smart and surprising interplay between foreground, mid-ground and background elements. Obviously Gao thinks a lot about form, but he’s not a dry formalist filmmaker. His film pays discreet homage to three masters who have died in the past year--Bergman, Antonioni and Edward Yang--and he’s learnt more from them than just how to construct compelling images. In the synthesis of characters and settings lies a moving empathy with the plight of the seemingly hopeless.

-- Tony Rayns

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