User Reviews

This movie develops slowly but give it a chance.

It focuses on a young Chinese guy, Jacky, in the Netherlands (Eindhoven) who is pretty much still under his mother's wings. His family arrange a marriage and ChiChi comes over. He is not ready for a marriage and the poor girl is left by herself most of the time. His indirection in life is reflected by his family and friends: his obnoxious brother, the gay singer who makes a pass at him, the tourist guide. The ending is abrupt but appropriate.

Holland never looked so small and cold to me. Harrowing.

This movie is rare in Dutch cinema. A Chinese movie mostly but shot and made by Chinese living in Holland, mostly Amsterdam.

It's about a guy named Jacky who's caught inbetween Dutch/Western life and old traditional Chinese life. He has a girl flown over from China by his mother but that does not really work out either. As a gift to his mother he asks a singer to perform, much to his mother's dismay, showing who little he knows about Chinese culture.

The movie is sometimes a little slow and even though a movie with long silences does not have to be bad it sometimes is a little painful. The acting is fairly good.

It may give you a good sense of how it is like to live between cultures.

The greatest problem with this movie is the total lack of any action and meaningful interaction between the persons in the movie. There are a lot of long single position shots, often just showing daily activities, like someone unpacking his shoppings, or sitting in the train. And although the movie is very artistic in expressing this mood of young adults in between conflicting cultures, it goes too far and makes the characters rather unbelievable.

Jacky, the main character of the movie, seems not to be able to make any decision, and having a lowly paid job, is dreaming of having his own shop. Yet, we never see him take any initiative in his real life. During the movie he moves to his own apartment, and when is mother arrived, she comments on the nice cough he has bought. To me it seems a little odd that he could have furnitured the apartment all on his own.

Now, I can believe that he is not ready for a marriage, but I think it is rather odd that there is no interaction at all between him and ChiChi, the girl that came over from China (not an easy thing to do in reality) to marry him, and who is now staying with him in the apartment.

Although this film portrais the life of a young chinese in between two cultures, China and the Netherlands, the underlying motivations and reasons for the main character are much more widely aplicable on todays society.

Maybe some criticism is in order as to the editing but all together a beautiful portrait.