Blush 

This movie just grows and grows inside my mind as I think about it.  I was a little resistant to it when I was watching it, thinking it was just another Chinese melodrama.  The murkiness of the film stock transferred to the video I had wasn’t encouraging either.  However it was only a matter of time before I caught on to the beauty of this movie, both the movement of the narrative and the composition of scenes.  More often than not he chose to shoot from a distance, a strategy that works much better on the big screen than on video, but I could still get the idea: that the world was much bigger than what these characters could handle.  They follow their best interests, or their trained impulses, but their ways are already outdated. 

The outcomes of each character are not only completely believable and lacking in syrupy pathos, they seem to extend into a sense of who Chinese are, and what options they have even in today’s society.  One character dies, one flees, and one stays and tries to nurture the future, sustained only by hope. 

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