FS: Electric Shadows

Foreign Spotlight: Electric Shadows

A love poem to Chinese Cinema.

Films that depict the cultural significance of the Cinema are rarely made. Everywhere around the world people watch films and whether we believe it or not, films affect our lives. Movies like Psycho and Jaws instill fear into generations. It is a fact that movies can inspire debate, confusion, disorders, patriotism, crime, among many others things. Electric Shadows is a film that shows how that happens. Now the story in the film may be an extreme situation, but it takes an extreme situation to understand what happens on a smaller scale.

This is director Xiao Jiang’s first film – an impressive debut and a good foundation for a career of international success. That alone is enough to support this film. Any filmmaker who embraces their own culture good or bad and aims to show their world with honesty and a hope of progression is a filmmaker to be championed.

I wouldn’t consider it far fetched to assume that Xiao Jiang was in some way inspired by Italian cinema. Every festival from Rotterdam to Toronto and even publications like Variety has called Electric Shadows the Chinese Cinema Paradiso. Briefly there is also the mention of Antonioni in the film. But more than that, it is the performance from the children that illustrate similarities in style between Italian cinema and this film. It is rare to find a director who is able to pull honest performances from children. There are the Dakota Fannings of the world who are trained in the craft and then, there are many unknown children like the ones in this film who give great performances naturally, and that is a credit to the director. Just think for instance of Guisseppe Tornatore’s Toto in Cinema Paradiso, or Lina Wertmuller’s brats in Ciao Professore, or even the violent street kids in Antonio Caupuano’s Vito and the Others. Most of all, hands down, the best comparison that can be given is Vittorio De Sica’s body of work with children as actors – Bicycle Thief & The Children are Watching Us. Now, Xiao Jiang is her own filmmaker, with her own style worthy of encouragement, but her love of cinema is very much apparent, so a comparison to De Sica, when it comes to her handling of children, is surely a compliment.

Not only does this film pay homage to Chinese cinema, but it also aims at all of Chinese culture in general from politics to art. The cinematography is elegant and classic, rightfully so. Lensed by Yang Lun, most recently known for “Who Cares”, paints a pretty picture of China and its many atmospheres. From the gray city to the gold desert and abandoned train tracks we see China from a different perspective then we, the international audience have been seeing, through the eyes of cinematographer Christopher Doyle (recently The White Countess). The score is filled with classic Chinese songs from the past forty years.

Electric Shadows is an entertaining film, an unbiased history lesson absent of stereotypes, a postcard and a lyric love poem all in one. Hopefully this will inspire more Chinese films to be researched, studied, appreciated, and hopefully it will open the doors for new Chinese films to come overseas and compete in the world market.

A great movie about the love of cinema can only be made by one who is in love with it. Electric Shadows was made by Xiao Jiang.

First Run Features releases the film in New York this weekend.