ELECTRIC SHADOWS
Directed by: Xiao Jiang.
Produced by: Jianxin Huang & Derek Yee Tung Sing.
Written by: Xiao Jiang & Qingsong Cheng.
Director of Photography: Lun Yang & Hong Chen.
Music by: Lin Zhao.
Released by: First Run and the Asia Society.
Language: Mandarin with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: China. 99 min. Not Rated.
With: Yu Xia, Yihong Jiang, Haibin Li, Xiaotong Guan, Yijing Zhang, Zhongyang Qi & Zhengjia Wang.

A Chinese incarnation of Cinema Paradiso, Electric Shadows offers glimpses of Chinese film classics like Street Angel, Shining Red Star and The Back Alley, evoking a time when open-air film screenings brought culture-starved communities together under starlit skies. Opening in present-day Beijing, Dabing (Yu Xia), a happy-go-lucky water delivery boy and film buff, accidentally crashes his bike into a pile of bricks while on his way to the local cinema. Even before he can pick himself up, an angry young woman named Ling Ling (Zhongyang Qi) suddenly smashes his head with a brick. After coming to in the hospital, Dabing sets out to find his assailant. At the police station he discovers that not only has Ling Ling been arrested, but that she is mentally disturbed. There, he is handed a key to her apartment and a note from her, asking him to feed her fish.

Her apartment is a shrine to the films from the Golden Age of Chinese cinema. Mesmerized, Dabing begins reading Ling Ling's private diary to find out who she is. In it, she tells stories of growing up in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, a time when her beautiful and independent mother (Yihong Jiang) transported life in a poor village into something far more enchanting through her infectious love for the cinema. But while reading her diary, Dabing finds out that he and Ling Ling share a far more significant connection than their mutual love for the movies.

Ling Ling's childhood scenes are the most well crafted parts of the film, predominantly propelled by the fine acting of the child actors and, most importantly, by Yihong Jiang, whose severity within her glamour adds a touch of realism to the nostalgic past. It is a shame then that as the film progresses, the back-and-forth structure between the past and the present starts to feel increasingly tedious. What finally kills the believability of Electric Shadows is the sloppy series of coincidences with which Dabing and Ling Ling are brought together in the end. Although an appealing paean to the magic of the silver screen, the film's underdeveloped ending proves too difficult to be overlooked solely in the name of romance. Let's just say there's a bit of a problem when one of the reasons the protagonist reunites with his love interest is a brutal, unnecessary death of an innocent puppy. Marie Iida
December 16, 2005