Shun Li (Zhao Tao) is a Chinese immigrant who is working to pay off her debt to the organization that funded her passage to Italy. Ordered to take on one labor-intensive job after another in different Italian towns, Li has little choice but to put up with the arrangement and await the day her 8-year-old son will be sent to her from back home. Newly placed in a café in an island town, Li finds a friend in a grizzled old fisherman and poet, Bepi (Rade Serbedzija), who treats her with great tenderness and affection. Their relationship doesn't sit well, however, with the locals, and Li's Chinese boss orders her to end her ties with Bepi or jeopardize her son's arrival. Tao and Serbedzija are wonderful as the leads in co-writer/director Andrea Segre's somber yet touching movie, a handsome film that wisely treats the story's location as another protagonist, with moody shadows, mysterious alleys, and streets that fill periodically with the rising ocean. Recommended. (T. Keogh)
Shun Li and the Poet
Film Movement, 98 min., in Italian & Mandarin w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $24.95, July 9 Volume 28, Issue 5
Shun Li and the Poet
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