Single Man (2010) - Chinese Indie Film

Director: Hao Jie
CAST: Yang Zhenjun, Du Tianguang, Liang Youzhong, Liang Cunying, Ye Lan, Wang Suzhen

Storyline: Gujiagou village, Zhangjiakou city, Hebei province, northwest of Beijing, the present day.

Four old single men while away their time in grouchy banter, remembering their sex lives as young men. Back in 1966 Bighead Liang (Liang Youzhong), now over 70, lost his hand in a hay-cutting machine when flirting with the future mother of Qiaosan. Back in 1945,Gu Lin (Du Tianguang) was abandoned by his wife while trying to grope his sister-in-law in their shared bed one night. In the 1940s,12-year-old Liuruan (Liang Cunying) was in an arranged married to a young woman but refused to sleep with her on their wedding night. In fact,he is a homosexual. Back in 1975 as a young shepherd Old Yang (Yang Zhenjun) got local girl Eryatou pregnant. Now middle-aged, Eryatou (Wang Suzhen) is married to village head Hao and has a grown son, Hao Jiangen, who is still trying to pass his university entrance exam, but she and Old Yang still have regular sex when her husband is away. One day Old Yang decides to take a wife and buys a Sichuan girl (Ye Lan) from some human traffickers for RMB 6,000 (US$900). But she tries to run away after their first night together, and then Qiaosan tells his parents that he is in love with her and wants her as his wife.

This is a strange and delightful find from China: a sex comedy, bawdy and a little raunchy, about four elderly farmers. New director Hao Jie, with a bit of Boccaccio and a dollop of Rabelais, shows you a side of rural China you've probably never seen before.Director Hao grew up in a village in rural Hebei, northern China. His childhood memories, and the lives and loves of his relatives and neighbours make up the raw material of this fiction feature. But it's all based on fact, he says, and all but one of the actors in the film are non-professionals playing themselves, or somewhat fictionalized versions thereof. Which is all the more remarkable considering both the saucy nature of the material, and the genuine vitality and naturalness of the performances. Chinese indie cinema, at its most wryly entertaining. - Shelly Kraicer