Lost in Beijing

In her native China, Li Yu's third feature was met with the best and worst of responses. Initially, Lost in Beijing was a hit, but Chinese authorities pulled it from theaters after a few weeks and imposed a two-year ban on the director and writer/producer Fang Li (Summer Palace), although Western viewers aren't likely to find the film's non-gratuitous nudity as "pornographic" as China's Film Bureau. In Yu's Beijing, money buys everything but happiness. Liu Ping Guo (Fan Bingbing), wife of high-rise window washer An Kun (Tong Da Wei), works in a foot massage parlor run by Lin Dong (Tony Leung Ka Fai), the husband of infertile aesthetician Wang Mei (Elaine Jin). One couple is poor and powerless; the other rich and powerful. After a night of drinking with a depressed colleague, Ping Guo passes out at work, and Dong takes advantage of her. It just so happens that Kun is washing windows outside the parlor at the time, and after catching Dong in the act, initially attempts to blackmail him, and later—when his wife becomes pregnant—offers to sell Dong the baby. Relations between the haves and the have-nots soon become hopelessly tangled as the two couples become unlikely business partners. Sure to appeal to fans of Jia Zhangke (The World) and early Zhang Yimou (The Story of Qiu Ju), this is recommended. (K. Fennessy)