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Beijing Bicycle
review by Carrie Gorringe, 21 September
2001 26th
Toronto International Film Festival
Beijing
Bicycle, winner of
the Silver Bear Award for Best Picture at the 2001 Berlin
International Film Festival, adds new dimensions to a situation
outlined in Vittorio de Sica's 1948 neorealist classic, The
Bicycle Thief. In the case of Beijing Bicycle, a
young man named Guei (Cui Lin) a new "import" from the
countryside who is desperate to work his way up from poverty, is one
day's pay away from owning his mountain bike outright when it is
stolen. As in de Sica's film, this incident spells potential
disaster for Bicycle's protagonist: he not only can no longer
work as a bicycle courier, but he must also reimburse the courier
company for the cost of the bicycle; it was still the company's
property. He must find it. Having extracted a promise from his
manager that he can keep his job if he can return the bike, the
young man goes in search of it. When he finds it, he discovers, to
his surprise, that the thief, Jian (Li Bin) is not a professional
criminal, but something else altogether: another teenager, much like
himself, whose middle-class parents are making painful financial
sacrifices to put their children through private schools; there is
very little money left over for luxuries. Jian not only feels
excluded from a social circle populated by students from wealthier
families, but he has a crush on one of the girls, the attractive and
intelligent Qin (Zhou Xin). Eager to feel as if he were truly part
of the group, Jian somehow finds the money to purchase the courier's
bicycle at a flea market, unaware of its origins. Not wanting to
lose all of the privileges he has gained through the possession of
the bicycle, Jian uses his gang of friends to keep it in his
possession.
De Sica's film
concentrated upon the search itself, and the psychological toll that
it takes upon the relationship between father and son; Bicycle's
main focus is the relationship between thief and owner: both, as it
turns out, are victims in some way or another. The courier requires
the bicycle for his very survival, but the teenager does as well,
though not to the same degree. Although he is rightfully seen as a
somewhat typically self-pitying adolescent, director Wang Xiao-Shuai
also persuades the audience to understand the nature of his
victimization. Surrounded by wealthier classmates, and struggling to
keep up appearances (under the fear of being shunned and potentially
prevented from meeting his parents' high social and economic
expectations), his motivation for possessing the bicycle is
understandable, though no less wrong.
The
tone of each film is also different. De Sica's film, although
cynical about human nature, is also filled with a sentimentality
born of post-war outrage, an eulogy for a world where whatever
respect individuals had for the common good was possible. Bicycle
creates a world that observes all of the players at a
"scientific" remove, thus allowing the audience to see all
possible points of view.
Click on the titles below to read the reviews.
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Directed by:
Xiaoshuai Wang
Starring:
Lin Cui Xun Zhou Yuanyuan Gao Shuang Li Yiwei Zhao Yan Pang Fangfei
Zhou Mengnan Li
Written
by:
Peggy Chiao Hsiao-ming Hsu Danian Tang Xiaoshuai Wang
Rated:
PG-13 - Parents
Strongly Cautioned.
Some material may
be inappropriate for
children under 13.
FULL
CREDITS
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