| Something new, something light, something different, something safe made by Zhang Yuan in the form of Little Red Flowers? In the end, he chooses to keep up appearances by keeping his train of thoughts of thinking for yourself, oppose systems and not become a robot. The theme is represented by a daycare consisting of Government Official children in post-revolution Beijing and its free thinker is new arrival Qiang (a brilliant Bowen Dong) who is immediately at odds with the strict system that has its "rewards" in the form of little red flowers. Zhang Yuan does step back from a loose, documentary style often associated with his works (and he was a documentarian once to boot) to deliver a slick frame but nothing at the expense of losing who he is. No, style is amped to suitable degree instead, mostly through the usage of low angles to represent the world view of the children. Some of them being very well immersed in the well-oiled machine of the daycare where basically robots are bred. It's not even thinking outside of the box that is Zhang's concern, it's the about the option to think period! If you don't, you get the privilege of being totally stressed out, publicly humiliated and sporadically you see total apathy/evil grow in the kids thanks to the system. The kids don't know, the adults barely either. It's a system.
In a very sparsely plotted movie, we do wonder if Zhang is going to have Qiang perform his revolution, bring some with him or is it just a snapshot of a kid not possessing tuned decision-making but at least have one tuned instinct? It IS complex, it is rather dark and uncompromising the Zhang Yuan-way. Only now his subjects open up a more breezy, comedic tone that still has its reason for transforming the way it does come end time. |
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