Beijing (dpa) – A Chinese director aims to reveal life beyond Beijing’s walls of glass and flower pots in her latest film, which shows a rapidly changing, often chaotic city through the eyes of a randy twentysomething taxi driver.
“Summer Heat”, directed by Ning Ying, follows the amorous adventures of driver Dezi as he ferries passengers past blurs of burning neon and dark concrete in the months after his acrimonious divorce.
Chinese censors were shocked at first “because they said ‘we cannot recognize all this ugliness’ in the film”, Ning said after a recent pre-release premiere.
“I was really shocked by their reaction. They said ‘we cannot identify with this city that you show’,” Ning said.
“I feel they need to open their Third Eye to see what Beijing looks like today.”
The film, which cost just 4 million yuan (480,000 dollars) to shoot, finally won approval.
“Now we’re still working with a distribution company, trying to convince them there are people who will like this kind of film,” Ning said.
Documenting the rapid modernisation of the Chinese capital is a key theme in 41-year-old Ning’s work to date. She first called her new film, her fourth feature, “I Love Beijing” but censors worried that this title might sound irreverent or sarcastic.
In her 1992 film “For Fun”, which won prizes at several international film festivals, Ning documented the lives of elderly people who congregate in Beijing parks to share a few hours of Peking opera, exercise, conversation or conflict.
Both “For Fun” and “On the Beat” (1995), a look at police life far from the world of high-speed chases, vice squads and shootouts, used non-professional actors to capture bleak and comic moments.
Dezi is played sometimes by actor Yu Ailei and sometimes by the camera, creating a similar documentary style in several parts of “Summer Heat”.
His often hazy eyes record grotesque expats, penniless peasants, and more elderly locals striving for longevity through bizarre exercise regimes.
His lack of emotion intended to complement the inner turmoil of the mostly unhappy women he meets, Ning says.
In today’s society “men are more depressed. They have more requests by their wives, their girlfriends, their lovers. They are under more pressure.”
Dezi drinks and drives, visits seedy karaoke parlours, sneers at authority, and ogles his female passengers. A typical Beijing cabbie, perhaps, except that no driver is typical in a city so dominated by taxis.
A kite on the wall of Dezi’s apartment symbolizes “a kind of life that is going to disappear in Beijing”, says the director, who studied film in Beijing and Rome and was assistant director to Bernardo Bertolucci on the acclaimed epic “The Last Emperor” (1987).
“Every day and every minute it is going to change. It’s going to disappear in some way.”
