The Other Half, tonight at NWFC
Director: Ying Liang
A heartbreaking portrait of a young woman struggling along a dead-end path in grimy urban-industrial China, The Other Half is one of the highlights of the NW Film Center's current series "Lens on China." In telling the story of Xiaofen -- a pretty law clerk whose job entails recording the grievances of women, whose layabout boyfriend vanishes, whose neighborhood is fogged over with chemical pollution and whose mother is constantly trying to fix her up with more suitable men -- the film comments on the situation of women in rapidly modernizing Chinese cities, as traditional roles collapse and whole new sets of problems arise. It's beautifully shot; even the scenes of grey rain over grey streets somehow look pretty. And Xiaofen makes a more compelling narrator than the lead in Ying's follow-up, Good Cats, which showed earlier in the Film Center's series. Recommended.