At a brisk 58 minutes, Weijun Chen’s witty documentary chronicles the first ever experiment in democracy for a third grade classroom in Wuhan, China’s Evergreen Primary School. Three eight-year-olds vie for class monitor—Luo Lei, the current, rather tyrannical class monitor protecting his rank; the confident, loud-spoken Cheng Cheng; and the shy, out of place Xu Xiaofei (the only girl). With the help of their parents, the three candidates quickly engage in alliances, bribery, slander, and other vicious behavior you can hardly believe an eight-year-old is capable of doing.

The campaigns consist of talent shows, speeches, and one-on-one debates in which personal assistants (each candidate gets two) heckle and point out the faults of the other candidates. Before the talent demonstration even begins, Cheng Cheng stirs up a nasty attack on Xu Xiaofei, after procuring Luo Lei’s help, and half the class ends up in tears. It is one of the few times the teacher intervenes.

The adult presence in the film is…uncomfortable. Does China’s one-child policy promote such authoritative, overly engaged parenting, or do these parents just really want their kid to win? It’s shocking how important it is to them. At first, Luo Lei refuses his parents’ help and their insistence that he needs “tricks” and a “technique,” as they describe it. You immediately root for him when he declares, “I don’t want to control others, they should think for themselves.” Although somewhere down the line, he bends to his parents’ urges and corruptible “tricks.” Cheng Cheng, on the other hand, admits right away that he wants to be class monitor “because you order people around.” But give him a break, he’s only eight. When at home, he prefers to watch TV in his underwear and whines every time his parents give him a new speech to memorize.

Lies, deception, cruelty, corruption—you would think I was describing a typical presidential campaign, but Please Vote for Me is shockingly close to the mark. Shortlisted in 2007 for the Best Documentary Oscar, and winner at several film festivals, Chen’s film neither discounts nor credits democracy as a superior agenda, but it does offer a head spinning exposé, in the form of third graders, on political tactics and power. B. Bastron
August 19, 2008