The admired and adored Gong Li, regular leading lady of Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern), here plays against her "legendary" good looks, indeed drops out of the World's Most Beautiful Woman Sweepstakes altogether, with her body bulked out in simulated pregnancy beneath a black-and-red-checked woolen jacket, her face framed in a fringed green scarf, and her features frozen in an expression that speaks of the discomfort of blocked sinuses, possibly, or wet mittens. An unlikely heroine, and an unselfcongratulatory performance, and in both ways unlike her previous ones. The role is that of the peasant wife of a rural Chinese chili farmer, who, when the action opens, has just received a kick in the crotch from his boss (not without provocation) and has incurred minor damages ("left testicle slightly swollen"). The wife's quest to even the score (money won't square it; nothing less than contrition will) takes her all the way up the bureaucratic hierarchy from the local Village to the distant District to the otherworldly City: geographical locales that demarcate distinct dramaturgical acts. Each location is sketched in quickly and deftly with candid-camera street photography, and the contemporary time period has perhaps encouraged the director to relax some of his stylized stiffness. The gentle social comedy along the way, though a bit ponderous and plodding in the telling, especially for a story so close to a shaggy dog, produces the occasional suspicion of a smile, the infrequent light snicker or low chuckle. And at the end it produces an irony that sufficiently justifies the journey. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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