dat camera

Not on par with Wen Jiang's previous two films. The directing and cinematography - yes. The text is intelligent and the narrative form - four interconnected stories each representing a season in 1976 - is ambitious. Individual scenes here have resonance and impact, but the convoluted, somewhat oddball story linking them stays lacking even after ends are tied. This is certainly not the hard-hitting film that was Devils on the Doorstep.

It starts out as a story of madness, and a very well executed story too. But the movie is divided into four parts and none of the later three can match the first one.

Wen Jiang once again proves to an amazing director. This is filmmaking of the highest order, loaded with the expressive camera stylizations of Jeunet and the madcap magic realism of Kusturica. There were scenes that made me actually say "wow". The film does seem rather incomprehensible at times (especially during the first part) and the ambiguity may be a bit gratuitous, but not unbearably so and it all pretty much comes together in the end. Wonderfully intriguing and funny and brilliant.