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(More customer reviews)Jiang Xiao's feature debt film `Electric Shadows' requires a bit of suspension of disbelief - slightly patchy script needs polishing up, having more than one unbelievable coincidences - but her sincere attitudes toward the film's material are no doubt genuine, and I promise this emotional film ultimately delivers.
`Electric Shadows' employs a very familiar storytelling device, reading of someone's journal. The time is set in modern Beijing, where an avid moviegoer Mao Dabing encounters a mentally disturbed girl in a most bizarre way. That is, she hits him in the head with a brick, and while being questioned about her motives for doing that by the police, she entrusts Mao with the key to her room.
You have to believe this incredible introductory part because it is in her room (or diary) that the real story begins. In the following flashbacks, the film goes back to the year 1971 when a young beautiful woman dreaming of becoming a movie star in a rural Chinese town unexpectedly gets pregnant, and gives birth to a girl named Ling Ling.
The film really gets underway when it depicts the life of little girl Ling Ling, whose life is surrounded by the world of cinema. Ling Ling is often taken care of by the kind middle-aged projectionist (here is an echo from `Cinema Paradiso'), who manages the screening of films in the community's vacant lot. Ling Ling also establishes friendship with a boy newly arrived, and all these episodes are told beautifully against the backdrop of the history of modern-day China.
There are several references to the films popular among the Chinese people - Albanian film `Victory Over Death' plays an important role - and footages from Chinese films are inserted, but you don't have to know about these film, which strengthens the authentic feelings of the community in a Chinese town in the early 70s.
The story often gets melodramatic as it goes on, and sometimes it is too sentimental. The `frame' part of the film looks contrived, and some part of the story is too unbelievable (for example, how could the girl living in the big city of Beijing manage to live in such a nice room?)
But the strong story of Ling Ling will remain with you, with the sure hand of the director who knows something about growing-up and coping with the reality of life for a child. And the two child actors who played two Ling Lings are so good and adorable. `Electric Shadows' is a bitter sweet tale of childhood memories. Sometimes too bitter, but it is all the more worthwhile because of that.
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Winner of the Audience Award at the Deauville Asian Film Festival, ELECTRIC SHADOWS is a charming tale reminiscent of Cinema Paradiso. Set in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, when outdoor cinemas enchanted China's masses and audiences breathed and dreamed as one, Electric Shadows tells of a young man and woman whose love of movies has shaped and guided the lives.The story is set into motion by a disastrous encounter: delivery man Dabing, done with the day's deliveries, crashes while racing to the movie theatre on his bike. As he's picking himself up, a pretty young woman named Ling Ling hits him on the head with a brick for no apparent reason. In the hospital, Dabing learns that Ling Ling is also being treated-- in the psychiatric unit. When he confronts her, Ling Ling asks him to go to her home to feed her fish. Intrigued by this strange request (and more than a little smitten by her beauty), Dabing does so and discovers that Ling Ling's apartment is a virtual shrine to the movies, filled with posters, stills and memorabilia. He also finds her extraordinary diary and begins to read the stories of a little girl's passion for the movies, which reminiscent his own.
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