Men & Woman (China)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C+
What
about a story about relationships that begins with a pirate radio station
advocating sex in bathrooms, then moves on to all kinds of homosexuality and
challenges the assumption of heterosexual relationships? This would be stupid and boring if this were
just another American independent schlock film, this is Men & Woman (1999) and it comes from China. Needless to say it was banned in their
mainland.
Xiao Bo
is the D.J. who moves to the city and becomes a border with a married couple,
The Qings. The Qings need the money,
but their relationship is not 100% to begin with. Xiao has others he is involved with, but the idea of having an
invisible network of any kind, especially one based on sexual subversion, was
just too much for China to handle.
The
problem is that the subversion is limited to the oppressive country of
origin. Outside of China, this is a
limited work, while the sex is almost non-existent. It may be subversive in this limited way, but does not go as far
as it would need to to qualify as outright boldness. Nevertheless, with all its problems, it ruffled a system that
needs to change and director Liu Bingjian can claim a victory against
oppression significant enough to be respected.
The
letterboxed 2.35 X 1 image is color consistent, but has Video Black
problems. As a result, the darker
scenes are problematic throughout.
Otherwise, it is above average and subtitles are of the burned-in
kind. The Dolby Digital 2.0 is Mono and
Mandarin is the language in this dialogue-based film. There are no extras, but the film stands on its own well
enough. Now, we’ll have to see what
Bingjian will do next.
- Nicholas Sheffo
