Film festival launch flexes its global reach

Vancouver Sun, September 27,2001

By Katherine Monk and Marke Andrews

BEIJING BICYCLE. Starring Cui Lin, Zhou Xun, Gao Yuanyuan. In Mandarin with English subtitles.

With big cities in China being flooded with new immigrants from the coutryside looking for a better life and a bigger paycheque, this story of a young hick trying to make his way through the urban jungle of Beijing is not only timely, it hearkens back to Vittorio De Sica' s classic, The Bicycle Thief, with a little hint of PeeWee's Big Adventure. Guei is your average farm kid who ends up looking for work in the increasingly rough streets of Beijing, when he gets a job as a bicycle courier -- complete with a brand new bike. Suddenly, his status and self-worth rise, only to be cut short when his two-wheeler is ripped off. Without his bike, he has no work, and soon, no job. He makes a deal with his boss that if he finds the bike, he can get his job back. The employer finally caves and Guei finds his bike, but the new market economy finally steps in to assert class hierarchy. Funny and gut-wrenching at the same time, this is a great look at problems in the new China. Today, 7 p.m. Ridge and Oct. 4, 12:30 p.m. Vogue.

-- K.M.