Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Excellent, a Must See

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Tian Yu directed by veteran Chinese actress Joan Chen is a bold film which is completely different both in style as well as content from those of other Chinese films made by fifth and sixth generation film makers.Soon after its filming its anti Chinese communist party stance had angered the Chinese cultural authorities to such an extent that it is still banned in China.Much of the film's strength lies in its choice of far off landscapes which add surreal beauty to the film.The film is sad as a young girl is sent away from her home to initiate a communist party sponsored reeducation process but she becomes a victim of sexual slavery.This is a real story which underscores not only the plight of the film's protagonist but also of countless ordinary girls whose happiness was snatched by the official brutality of the omnipotent communist party ideology.Top notch scenes of the film include sequences in which the young protagonist is forced to live in a far off settlement with a Tibetan eunuch.This unexpected event gives rise to emotional bonding between two people cut off from human civilization.

Even though Tian yu (Xiu-Xiu) is a deeply moving film, one could sit back complacently thinking that something like this could never happen in America. Yet, Million Dollar Baby shows us that it can. Two excellent films. Of course, the movies are very different in many ways, but I was intrigued by some key parallels. In both, the male lead is an older man who develops a special, non sexual love for the female lead. Both men, for quite different reasons blame themselves for the situations the women eventually find themselves in, and both help in the ultimate solution, at the cost of their own lives. But they are not to blame: in each case society has trapped the women into intolerable situations from which there is ultimately only one escape. The nurse who gloats that "she'll never do that again" after Maggie tries to pull out her life support is no less despicable than the nurses who deride Xiu-Xiu for what she has become, or the men who take advantage of her. We may view the system that forgot Xiu-Xiu as malignant, but it is no less so than the "benign" system that dehumanizes Maggie. Xiu-Xiu is the sort of film one expects to see in human rights film festivals… and what about Million Dollar Baby?

I've read several reviews here and, to me, all of them are missing the point of the film. Even though the main character trades sex for freedom, this takes place within the context of a society where individual desire and freedom simply don't exist. The girl, in the communist sense, has corrupted herself, not by trading her body for favor, but by wanting to. She places her own desires above those of the People and is endlessly punished for it. The film is a meditation on communist values, and how they have misled and betrayed its people. Everyone that the girl meets, except for her emasculated mentor, takes from her until, at the end, she simply has nothing left to give. The film works in the context of a larger metaphor, I believe, one that deals with Tibet and its relationship to China. One can plainly see that China's presence there is harmful, that its values spread corruption even to the furthest reaches. The relationship between the herder and the girl can be seen as a metaphor for the relationship between China and Tibet. The herder's death is not merely a reaction to the loss of a loved one. It is a metaphor for the death of the soul of Tibet. The Chinese government understood this all too well to be a harsh rhetorical criticism against its policies against women, Tibet, and people in general. That is why it was banned there.

I just saw this video last night.I mostly enjoyed it. The two main characters are wonderful to watch. The scenery was beautiful. Most of it was very touching,but I would have been happier with less explicit sex scenes. This film definitly held my interest,even though you must read the subtitles. It is a very sad story on two levels.Because of the beautiful young girl's situation and because of her wonderful, but much older castrated mentor's love for her. After seeing "The Shower" and now this film, I am developing an appreciation and interest for Chinese films. For those who don't mind reading subtitles in a good foreign film, I don't think this will dissapoint many.