Uncompromising `Xiu Xiu' -- Film Personalizes Cultural Revolution With Tale Of Chinese Girl Lost In The Shuffle

Movie review XXX 1/2 "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl," with Lu Lu, Lopsang, Gao Jie, Li Qianqian, Qiao Qian. Directed by Joan Chen, from a script by Chen and Yan Geling. 99 minutes. Broadway Market Cinemas. "R" - Restricted because of strong sexual content.

Beautiful and severe, this highly personalized account of the tragedy of China's Cultural Youth Revolution is the first-time directing effort of Joan Chen, a Chinese-born actress ("The Last Emperor," "Twin Peaks") who nearly shared her heroine's fate.

Chen was 14 in 1975, when she was picked at random to enter an actors' training program in Shanghai. She claims she was lucky to escape the work camps - and worse - to which eight million other teenagers were sent between 1967 and 1976. Millions never returned home, and many simply disappeared.

"Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl," based on a true story and Yan Geling's novella, "Tian Yu," follows a particularly unfortunate girl who wanted to join the Girls' Iron Cavalry and ended up being forgotten by the government that sent her to Tibet.

In the film, Wen Xiu, nicknamed Xiu Xiu by her friends, is assigned to train with Lao Jin, an aging eunuch who moves his horses and army tent across the plains. Too shy to bathe himself, he builds a bath for her and performs other small acts of kindness.

She appreciates these gestures, but her mind is elsewhere. For the most part she's indifferent to the seasons, the care of the horses, even the stark beauty of the night sky. She longs to return home or see a movie (even if it is Red Army propaganda) or join the cavalry, but eventually she discovers that her dreams are hopeless. The cavalry has been disbanded, she lacks the influence to get a travel permit, and eventually she turns to the only option she can imagine.

As Lao Jin watches, she sleeps with peddlers, officials and other visitors, determined that one of them will use his influence and help her escape from this situation. He cleans up after her, bringing her fresh water after each encounter, but for all the demonstrations of affection and regard, he fears that she's simply allowing herself to be exploited. A solitary, emasculated father figure, he is the only one who truly cares for her.

Reminiscent at times of Akira Kurosawa's 1975 Oscar winner, "Dersu Uzala," which dealt with the growing friendship between a resourceful Siberian hermit-guide and an adventurous outsider, Chen's movie ultimately reveals quite a different purpose.

The narrator is a young man who is infatuated with Xiu Xiu and tries to piece together her life from what he's heard.

He brings a chilling distance to her story. The final scenes, in which Xiu Xiu tries to win a trip to the hospital by shooting off three toes, are uncompromisingly bitter, suggesting in microcosm the fate of many whose hopes were crushed by Mao's disastrous policies.

This is a much harsher film than "To Live" or "The Blue Kite" or "Farewell My Concubine" or the other "official" Chinese movies that have addressed such oppressive periods in China's recent history. It was made entirely without the permission of the government, which has since fined Chen for shooting on location without approval of the Chinese film bureau.

Yet the result is anything but ragged. Like the recent "Windhorse," which was shot partly in Tibet with hidden cameras, "Xiu Xiu" triumphs over the shot-on-the-run nature of its creation. The compositions are striking, the editing secure, and the performances of the two leads could not be better.

Lu Lu, the 17-year-old actress who carries the film, so vividly captures Xiu Xiu's initially indomitable spirit that the character's desperation is crushing.

Lopsang makes Lao Jin's literal impotence a crucial part of his character, so much so that his final actions are as comprehensible as they are shocking.