Cinema
Evening Rain
巴山夜雨
Wu Yigong · 1980
Synopsis
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, a passenger boat sails from Chongqing towards Wuhan. On board, the poet Qiu Shi, wrongly imprisoned for six years, is being transferred in secret under the guard of Li Yan and Liu Wenying. Other travellers board along the way: a poor girl who is about to be sold as a wife, a schoolteacher, an old opera actor, an old woman who has just lost her son, a young worker, a little girl in rags. Gradually, the prisoner wins their pity.
Context
The film is co-directed by Wu Yonggang and Wu Yigong, according to Mubi. According to The Paper, the elder did not come to the set every day, left the younger a great deal of freedom and listened in the evening to the account of the takes; the crew lived for about a month on a boat, making five or six round trips on the Three Gorges route, and the cabin scenes were shot in the studio. The same newspaper sees in it a glimmer in the dark years, tied to the gradual return of human warmth rather than to dramatic conflict.
Who it is for
A film of eighty to ninety-two minutes depending on the sources, almost entirely on board; no French release is established.
Prizes and reception
It received the prize for best film at the first Golden Roosters in 1981, where Ye Nan won the one for screenplay.
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