Cinema
In the Wild Mountains
野山
Yan Xueshu · 1985
Synopsis
In a village in the Qinling mountains, at the start of the reforms, Huihui and his wife Guilan farm the land in the old way, and Huihui distrusts anything new. Hehe, a former soldier who has seen something of the world, is by contrast full of initiatives, but his ventures fail and leave him in debt, and his wife Qiurong, attached to custom, leaves him. Hehe comes to lodge with Huihui. Guilan, tired of her husband's passivity, supports his projects, first silkworm rearing and then the gathering of squirrel droppings for the pharmacopoeia.
Context
The film adapts a novel by Jia Pingwa, from a screenplay by Yan Xueshu and Zhu Zi. Completed in 1985, it was released in China on 15 May 1986, then shown in Toronto the same year and in Berlin in 1987. The Rotterdam festival stresses that it mixes comedy and romance and speaks frankly of desire and ambition; the Berkeley film archive sees in it a study of the roles of man and woman in the countryside, whose bawdiness is played deadpan.
Who it is for
A comedy of rural manners of about a hundred minutes; shown in France at the Festival des 3 Continents in 1986.
Prizes and reception
The film won the Golden Montgolfière at Nantes in 1986 and several Golden Roosters, including for direction and for female performance, for Yue Hong.
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