| Overview: | Five years in the making, China's most distinguished actor/director Jiang Wen's latest film more than lives up to expectations. Gorgeously shot against breathtaking backdrops among swooping terraced hills of China's Yunnan and the sweeping plains of the Gobi Desert, the film juggles several timelines to offer insight into the mysterious forces that make people cross paths and, without cognisance, shape each other's destinies.
Composed as a quartet of spellbinding stories, the film begins with a pastoral idyll about the magical and moonstruck existence of a young widow and her son. A pair of embroidered shoes sends the mother into a flight of fancy and delirium; but later, a trip to her island hideaway reveals something of her past.
The second story, both hilarious and poignant, is set in a college campus at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution. It focuses on the desires and an illicit ménage à trois between two Indonesian Chinese returnees and a voluptuous female doctor. A scandal involving a 'bottom-pinching molester' paradoxically binds and severs their ties.
In the next episode, the protagonist of the previous story is sent down to the village where the mad mother and her son live. A riveting tale unfolds, about male egos and female bellies, and how caressing velvet can save or ruin lives.
The final story journeys back in time to the windswept Gobi Desert, home of nomadic Uyghurs. The film's main protagonists converge in a single unified time and place. Poised at crucial junctures in life - marriage, death and birth, their predestined connections are finally unravelled.
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