1994. Dir: Zhou Xiaowen.
Context:
Economic reforms during the Deng era led to more consumerist desire for material goods. The 'Responsibility System' put in place and adopted by 90% of peasant families, led to increased production and more buying power for peasants, stimulating demand for consumer commodities, like TV sets and so on...
The Film:
"Zhou shares Zhang Yimou’s interest in sexuality and rural life, but has a darker sense of humor. This is an underseen masterpiece, apparently never released on a DVD with English subs (though there are laserdisc rips floating around). Ermo is a rural woman who has a fierce rivalry with her neighbor. The neighbor gets a TV, so Ermo decides that they must get a TV too, but a bigger one. To raise the money, Ermo begins making noodles at night, eventually traveling into the city to sell them. She also starts an affair with her neighbor’s husband, who makes frequent trips into the city. Zhou’s tone is at once serious and satirical, sighing over changing values in Chinese society as it mocks them. It’s also relatively light on policing adultery, and Zhou films the noodle-making scenes with a sensuality not unlike sex scenes. While Zhang’s rural films are mixed with nostalgia and criticism of the past, this film takes a darkly comic look at their modern descendants." - http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13398&start=225#p506931
Reception:
The film won a prize at Locarno Film Festival.
Zhou Xiaowen, who in the 1980s was making more urban films, seems by 1994 and with this film to be catering more towards the international appetite for the accepted 5th Generation 'style', and makes a rural film, with a female central character. In a 1994 interview Zhou himself admits that this shift had something to do with trying to replicate the success of more international celebrated 5th Generation directors.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAc7sMiNGYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKXTsq0ExPQ
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC42folder/Ermo.html
