Xiu Xiu: the Sent Down Girl is probably a lot like you might expect. We in America only really get to see one or two types of Chinese films. This film is a lot like Zhang Yimou's films like To Live, Du Jou, and Raise the Red Lantern. Zhang could easily have directed this tragic film. But that's not a reason to criticize it. It is quite a great film. It starts off very slowly, but by the time Xiu Xiu moves in with the horse breeder Lao Jin, the film becomes great. Their relationship is the heart of the film, and it is difficult to find two better performances than those of Lu Lu and Lopsang. Xiu Xiu has been sent to study horse breeding. At first she is nervous about living with a strange man. He was castrated when he was younger, she is told. Lao Jin develops strong feelings for Xiu Xiu, as well as she does for him, but there isn't much they can do about it. Eventually, a young man comes around and tells Xiu Xiu he has influence to get her back home. She had come there with a bunch of other young girls and boys with an internship-type program. It failed, and everyone else went home months ago. In exchange for his help, Xiu Xiu gives him sex. He leaves, and, in a couple of weeks, another man shows up at the tent looking for sex. Lao Jin can do nothing but watch helplessly.
The film is very tense and moving. My main problem, besides the slowness of the beginning, is that the final sequence is perhaps too melodramatic.
SPOILERS
The prevaling undercurrent of the film is the love story between Lao Jin and Xiu Xiu. Of course, since nothing can happen, it is impossible. His pain comes from the fact that Xiu Xiu is destroying her own honor. He wants so badly to protect that. There is another undercurrent that should be there but I never felt: I wish Lao Jin felt angrier at the fact that Xiu Xiu would rather degrade herself and, eventually, die than live out her life with him as a horse breeder. I wish he would have objected at the end verbally. It's insulting, and his own suicide should have been caused by that insult rather than the fact that his beloved is dead.
The film is very tense and moving. My main problem, besides the slowness of the beginning, is that the final sequence is perhaps too melodramatic.
SPOILERS
The prevaling undercurrent of the film is the love story between Lao Jin and Xiu Xiu. Of course, since nothing can happen, it is impossible. His pain comes from the fact that Xiu Xiu is destroying her own honor. He wants so badly to protect that. There is another undercurrent that should be there but I never felt: I wish Lao Jin felt angrier at the fact that Xiu Xiu would rather degrade herself and, eventually, die than live out her life with him as a horse breeder. I wish he would have objected at the end verbally. It's insulting, and his own suicide should have been caused by that insult rather than the fact that his beloved is dead.