THE LOVE SONGS OF TIEDAN

Less lusty than his first village film Single  Man (2010), more a semi-romantic tribute to a local musical culture, The Love Songs  Of Tiedan is still marbled with a dry black comedy and rustic sexual frankness that totally reflects the locale in which it is set. Young writer-director Hao Jie  again draws on his home region of "northwest China"   for a much longer-spanned story. following a villager, Tie Dan , whose whole life is marked by his affection as a kid for Sister Mei , a pretty young singer. When she returns to his village after the Cultural Revolution with three daughters in tow, he first falls for the eldest one (who reminds him of her mother) and, after that is stymied, later finds himself pursued by the third daughter (who also reminds him of her mother).

Hao has considerable fun by casting the same actress, 25-year-old Lan Ye , in all three roles — which gives Chengdu-born Ye, who played the bought southern bride in Single Man, a star-making chance to strut her stuff with considerable variation (cute, quiet, extrovert). In the title role, Feng Si is a little overshadowed by both her and the rest of the female cast, though his strong features and impassioned performance of traditional  songs — which are used to roughly parallel the main story — do much to compensate.

The film\'s main weakness, compared with Single Man, is its lack of an overall tone. Hao\'s tendency towards arty framing for its own sake, and ellipses in the action, get in the way of the narrative in the first half, sometimes making it difficult to follow, especially given the multiple family characters. The second half, and particularly the final half-hour that\'s dominated by Ye\'s character of the third daughter, is almost a different movie, with photography by Du Pu markedly warmer and more richly hued, and Hao\'s direction much more straightforward — to the benefit of the whole film. Editing by South Korea\'s Baek Seung-hun , who also worked on Emily Tang\'s  All  Apologies, is cleaner in the latter half, while a modest piano score by Xiao He  provides discreet support.