A Rural Fairy Tale in A DEUX WORLD

The still of A DEUX WORLD.

□By DEREK

A didactic but delicately observed tale of a rural elementary school teacher and an autistic boy who\'s his sole pupil, A DEUX WORLD draws a whole world of the imagination without falling into the usual cliches of disease-of-the-week movies. Based on the 2009 story by Wang Hua, a Guizhou-based writer from the Gelao ethnic minority who once taught in a rural elementary school, the setting has been moved to a more conventionally pretty setting in rural Guangdong province but otherwise is a remarkably successful attempt at translating a novella to feature-film format without making the content feel over-stretched.

With a main cast of only four characters - the teacher and his wife, the boy and his single mother - the screenplay by Li Li, who wrote Liang\'s THE RING OF RAINBOW FLOWER (2008) and FAIRY TALES (2012), both centred on young people and their relationship to the adult world, encompasses a rich variety of characters in which the boy and his autism are catalysts to the adults sorting out ther own problems rather than being the main centre of attention. Left with no students after schooling is transferred to the city, the ageing teacher offers to take on the autistic, six-year-old Duanduan in order to keep his village school from closing.

With the support of his wife, and Duanduan\'s young mother - who was abandoned, pregnant with Duanduan, by her boyfriend some six years ago - the teacher tries to find the key to unlocking the kid\'s mind. That key turns out to be the national flag in the school\'s courtyard that Duanduan becomes hypnotised by, to the exclusion of anything else. By tricking the boy\'s mind, the teacher manages to make some progress - for the time being. Any number of meanings can be read into the story, but it\'s basically about the small lies one tells oneself and others to get by in life: both the teacher and the mother emerge the wiser from the process but at great personal loss.

Li\'s script cuts out all non-essentials and concentrates on the emotional heart of the story, beautifully evoked by the gentle score of Liu Sijun and gliding visuals of cameraman Liu Haijian, who shot FAIRY TALES. Liang started his career as a cameraman, bringing a versatile look to films like THE STORY OF LOTUS  (2003), DUET (2005) and crime drama GUN OF MERCY (2007) - all set in the countryside - and, with little conventional plot, the film\'s cohesive visual style is as much a part of the film as anything else.

As the stubborn teacher whose own motives are open to question, TV actor Liu Weihua underplays what could have been a grandstanding role, and he\'s warmly partnered by Ailiya as his equally obsessive wife. But it\'s actress Nemo Huo, 27, a regular in Liang\'s films, who quietly steals the show as the young mother whose life was once wrecked but who now finds a potential new beginning.