In the Heat of the Sun (Yang guang can lan de ri zi) - Wen Jiang

durante la rivoluzione culturale cinese il padre di Monkey deve andare via, in qualche brigata per la rivoluzione.

il ragazzo si innamora di Mi Lan, che ne sa più di lui.

questo corteggiamento è l'anima del film, e già da sola vale la visione.

poi alla fine tutto cambia, si è diventati adulti, ma il periodo della giovinezza non tornerà mai più.

il film termina con i ragazzotti arricchiti, che prendono in giro lo scemo del "villaggio".

buona visione - Ismaele

 

 

QUI  il film completo, con sottotitoli in portoghese

 

 

In the Heat of the Sun is both fantastical, a rose-tinted look back at Mao's heyday, and startlingly naturalistic. Xia Ju gives an astonishing performance that deservedly netted him Best Actor at Venice (he remains the youngest ever recipient of the award). Whatever the attraction between Monkey and Mi Lan, its exact nature is never explicitly spelt out. Our hero's hormones are clearly swaying his thought processes - the cast are bathed in sweat or semi-clad for a great deal of the running time, and it's obvious Monkey sees Mi Lan as an object of desire - but part of his maturation stems from his slow realisation he's begun to feel something different for her than either directionless lust or puppy love for an older, wiser woman. 'If she's not your girlfriend, then what?' Monkey's angry father demands, and the boy's silence speaks volumes…

da qui

 

…The film's politics, though, are implied -- mere shadows on its margins. Jiang's camera, wandering at will through space, and tracking and backtracking through time, embodies an absolute freedom just out of reach of the film's principals. Ostensibly a nostalgia film about the Cultural Revolution's "good old days", this film is much more: a self-consciously post-modern, post-"fifth generation" dismantling of the modern Chinese realist film; an ironic, romance-drenched interrogation of the possibility of eros and passion in a totalitarian era; and a meditation on the traps and opportunities afforded by creative mis-remembering.

da qui

 

… “The sunlight was so relentless, so bright, that our eyes were washed in waves of blackness. In the Heat of the Sun. In the raging storms of Revolution. The soldiers' hearts turn towards the sun.” During that summer, Monkey acts out fantasies that make him feel like a hero and talks about characters from Russian novels and films dealing with revolutionary heroes searching for glory. He imagines himself standing up to bullies and enemies of the state in an imagined World War III and, in his fantasy, is willing to die for his country and his honor with women. He fights for his group, sending a rival gang member to the hospital for a month, sneaks into people’s apartments with a self-made key (though he never steals anything), and watches films banned as inappropriate for children by the authorities.  

Monkey’s main focus, unsurprisingly, is a girl whose portrait hanging on the wall of an apartment he let himself into is immediately captivating. His pursuit of Mi Lan (Ning Jing), who is a few years older than him, is, however, fraught with rejection, jealousy of group leader Liu Yiku, and passion that veers out of control. Although Jiang problematically redefines the Cultural Revolution as a period of spontaneity and freedom rather than dislocation and chaos, the film is not about politics but about the perilous transition from adolescence to maturity. Unlike other coming of age films, it is not a reflection of sadness and longing but an odyssey filled with the excitement of a new found freedom and revolutionary ardor.  

da qui