Film Review: Quick Quick Slow

Derek ELLEY is Senior Film Critic of the U.S.-based entertainment trade paper "Variety," which has been covering the international film business for over 100 years. Born in London, Elley has been writing about East Asian cinema for over 35 years, especially Chinese-language films, and has arranged numerous seasons both in the U.K. and elsewhere. In 1998, he co-founded the Far East Film Festival, in Udine, Italy, devoted to mainstream Asian movies. He has been visiting China regularly, both for business and pleasure, for over 20 years

A comedy about ordinary people taking part in a dance competition. China hosts the Olympics for the first time. The whole country is excited. The forgotten generation who are of the same age wants to be a part of it. A group of people-a security guard having a mid-life crisis, a desperate housewife, a fame-seeker and her admirer, an odd couple in their fifties - start their own dance team. They practise; they dream; they struggle. Is this real or just a dream?

Strong ensemble work, and a September-to-May theme reminiscent of “The Full Monty,” will make this first feature by young Beijing Film Academy grad Ye Kai a popular item in fest sidebars, as well as an attractive item for ethnic webs.

Pic centers on the generation aged 50-70 , there are 240 million in China. Close to 100 million of them can be seen in China\'s parks every morning, either exercising or dancing, as shown in pic\'s main titles.

Movie starts out with interviews with a handful of this generation, describing their hard-scrabble experiences when “sent down to the countryside”. These real-life anecdotes, told without rancour, punctuate the film, adding some context to the fictional characters\' story (which is humorous throughout) but also breaking up the pic\'s emotional momentum. Editing these out, however, would result in a running time of only about 70 minutes.

Fictional yarn gets underway with auditions in “an average Shanghai neighborhood” in which every aging or retired artiste