Viewing

[puddleshark]

I hardly ever watch films, but I ended up watching the Chinese film Lost and Love on youTube. Written and directed by a woman, Peng Sanyuan. A man whose infant son was abducted fifteen years ago travels through the provinces of China on a battered old motorbike, searching endlessly, handing out leaflets, knowing how hopeless the search is, and still unable to give up. Meeting a young man who was abducted as a young child, and who has only a handful of memories as clues, he starts to help the young man search for his birth parents.

A lyrical and understated Chinese road movie. Beautifully filmed, with the sort of scenes of everyday life in China that you rarely see in television dramas.

***

Started watching Again My Life, the new Lee Joon-gi Korean revenge melodrama, on Viki.com. And had to lower my expectations slightly. This one's cheesy. Cheesy soundtrack. Clunky writing (nearly always a danger sign when the main character has to resort to voiceover to explain what's going on). And the protagonist is just so unfeasibly good - a really Mary Sue.

But hey, cheese is fine, if you're in the mood for cheese. And Lee Joon-gi is always compulsively watchable.

Comments

[asakiyume]

In the film, why was the man's infant son abducted? Does the film ever say or imply? (Was it just that someone wanted a baby?) And does the young man know why he himself was abducted?

[puddleshark]

According to the film, child abduction and trafficking is quite a common crime in China.

[asakiyume]

So for sexual exploitation? (I'm sorry to be so dense)

Has the young man escaped from that sort of a situation?

And I guess I don't understand the abduction of a baby in that context (unless we're going really, really dark....)

PS {final edit, I promise)--I know this isn't the point of the film! I'm not sure why I'm so fixated on this point...

[puddleshark]

I get the impression that, with boys at least, it's more that children are stolen to order for childless couples.

[asakiyume]

Ahhh, okay: that makes sense.