China, My Sorrow

Stars: Guo Liang-Yi. When 13-year-old Tian-Ben (Guo Liang-Yi) plays a love song for a girl he adores, he's arrested by Mao's cultural police and whisked off to a "cultural detention center," for playing "obscene records." Here, the bespectacled lad (nicknamed "little four eyes") joins other victims of the Cultural Revolution and starts the long road back to political correctness. Donning a huge dunce cap, Tian-Ben and his compatriots in crime are forced to chant the refrain "another conspiracy, another defeat," eat the requisite terrible food, and provide really cheap labor in between "teaching" sessions. Befriended by a teenage revolutionary and a wise Buddhist monk, Tian-Ben learns not the lessons of Mao's party line, but some of humanity's age-old lessons: both wondrous and tragic. Made in France, away from the control of Chinese censors, China, My Sorrow is a charming, yet cutting, satire that plays fair with both the political subject matter that underscores it, and the realities of being a young teen in an unfamiliar situation. Winner of the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival. Audience: Foreign film fans would enjoy this, and possibly older teens.