Glittering Days

  Director An Zhanjun\'s natural affinity for gruff but warm Beijing types, and the capital\'s backstreets life, is again strongly in evidence in Glittering Days, which romanticises the natural community of oldstyle courtyard houses and tenement buildings while also showing the need for China to modernise its housing. The film is set during the \'90s, when many of Beijing\'s famous "hutong" were still being (controversially) demolished, and, like several of An\'s other films, could be seen as simply a piece of retro-doctrinaire cinema (Beijing Municipality was one of the producers). But the movie functions equally well as a human drama, thanks to An\'s immensely fluid direction and a fine cast of distinctive actors. Working again with Niu Fuzhi, the scriptwriter of "Hutong Days," An again rises above the lecturing aspect of the basic material by making each character jump naturally off the screen.
 

Though its Chinese title is the same as the classic 1948 Shanghai tenement drama, Myriad of Lights, the film is actually based on a 2002 play by Beijing People\'s Art Theatre playwright Li Longyun, which he famously wrote in a 23-day burst of creative energy. Niu\'s adaptation, with Li, opens the action out in a cinematic way without losing the important sense of community - beautifully choreographed in the film\'s opening section, which shows the crowded but mutually supportive tenement/courtyard life of the He family. However, after the expansive first section, set across a hot/rainy Beijing summer, the development of some of the subplots during the subsequent three seasons (e.g. Laoda\'s daughter\'s boyfriend problem) is a bit perfunctory as everything is crammed into less than two hours.

 

Glittering Days is basically an above-average "hutong" light drama, but it truly is an ensemble picture, with no single character or couple dominating the action. Liu Hua and Liu Lin show an easy chemistry as the middle brother and his more ambitious wife; the relationship between the movie\'s other main couple, the younger brother and his wife, is more forced and filmy, though Wu Yue is touching as the affection-starved wife. Among the older players, Liu Jinshan is likable as a big bluff Beijing working type and veteran actress Jin Yaqin good value for money as the family\'s dowager empress who won\'t be budged from the courtyard house she grew up in.

 

 

By Director: Derek Elly

 

Derek ELLEY is Chief Film Critic of "Film Business Asia." 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, and prior to joining "FBA" was senior film critic of U.S.-based entertainment trade paper "Variety". Derek ELLEY is Chief Film Critic of "Film Business Asia." 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, and prior to joining "FBA" was senior film critic of U.S.-based entertainment trade paper "Variety". Derek ELLEY is Chief Film Critic of "Film Business Asia." 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, and prior to joining "FBA" was senior film critic of U.S.-based entertainment trade paper "Variety". Derek ELLEY is Chief Film Critic of "Film Business Asia." 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, and prior to joining "FBA" was senior film critic of U.S.-based entertainment trade paper "Variety".