Lost in Beijing (蘋果) (China, 2007)

I really despise the repressive government regime of mainland China. I have a cousin who lives there and is about to get married to a mainlander . . . (waiting for the gasps to die down) . . . and he insists I can't be so black and white about it.

However, I repeatedly tell him that I don't necessarily have a problem with Chinese people or Chinese culture (which I just might, but that's a totally different issue), but the repressive nature of the authoritarian government. I understand that there are particularized difficulties in ruling over a billion people with a certain social order in mind, but I don't agree that repression is the only way of achieving those goals.

"Lost in Beijing" is a critical look at how modern life in Beijing has changed. It's so critical that I wondered how it got past the state censors. But apparently it didn't. Before it was approved for showing at the Berlin Film Festival, the director had to make over 50 cuts, watering down many seedy images of Beijing's underbelly, and basically even cutting out the bulk of one character's scenes (I'm guessing the prostitute, who has some inexplicable scenes).

The movie is about two couples of two different ages and classes that fall into a sort of tragicomedy of errors in their interactions. It's not necessarily any one character's fault. Each one contributes a small failing that turns into an issue bigger than any one of their contributions. And they keep doing it and it spirals out of control.

None of them alone are particularly unlikable, they can all pass as regular people trying to get by in the enigma of Beijing. They're not particularly stupid, but they do little things that they don't think through and then suffer the consequence. It's hard to sympathize with them, but they're not unsympathetic characters.

None of them, however, have a moral compass, and that's what I like about the English title (the translation of the Chinese title is "Apple", which is a character's name). Without a compass, you get lost, and that's what these characters are.

The statement the film makes about modern China is broad and multi-faceted. I don't even want to say what I think that statement is, because I might be wrong and it would probably be incomplete. But that a statement is being made is projected in the several montages of Beijing life that appear in the film – this montage is showing Beijing in broad strokes, and this film is saying something about Beijing.

It just pisses me off knowing that the film is censored. That some government panel decided for me, over the director, what I should see.

Recommended, very well done. 8 out of 10 tomatoes.