Frozen

The avant-garde art world of modern Beijing is the unusual setting for this Chinese indie film--a rare entity, given that independently produced movies are illegal in China. Directed by Wu Ming, a necessary pseudonym meaning "No Name," Frozen relies on flashbacks to tell the story of Qi Lei (Jia Hongshen), a saturnine performance artist who channels his frustration into increasingly bizarre masochistic acts. From the likes of eating a bar of soap (before finally puking it up), he eventually moves on to an unsurpassable finale: suicide as his last work of art. Using his body heat to melt a big block of ice, Qi Lei slowly dies of hypothermia in a defiant piece he dubs "Funeral in Ice." Despite its tantalizing glimpse into the Chinese underground art scene, the esoteric artistic expression of disenfranchised urban youth shown here is bound to leave most viewers, well, awfully darn cold. Very optional. (T. Rich)