Luxury Car

Winner of the “Un Certain Regard” prize at Cannes 2006, Wang Chao's drama is set amidst the social upheaval of 21st-century China, where capitalism, crime, and alienation figure in the lives of a new generation of young adults who migrate from rural villages to urban centers. Yanhong (played by pop star Tian Yuan) is one such migrant in the bustling city of Wuhan, all but resigned to her life as a karaoke bar girl and mistress to her boss, He (Huang He), a married man and low-level gangster who has gotten her pregnant. Her father, Li Qiming (Wu Youcai), an aging schoolteacher, comes searching for her brother, who's been missing for over a year, and stays with his daughter, stoically taking in the reality of the compromises in her life. Luxury Car is directed in a low-key fashion that underplays urban violence (while still keeping the poverty and predatory culture a constant but muted backdrop) as it follows the father's search through the city with the generous help of a retiring policeman (Li Yiqing), as well as Yanhong's travails when she gets caught up in a criminal war. Although the film offers a vivid portrait of the changing social culture sparked by the rural exodus to urban centers in contemporary China, the dramatic story itself is only fitfully involving. Optional. (S. Axmaker)