Seafood

China / Hong Kong 2001, 90 min, English subtitles

In the 1950s, members of the CP Politburo began to spend their summer holidays in the seaside resort of Beidaihe, to which Mao even devoted a poem. The desolate conditions there during the winter months lend the film’s scenery a ghostly quality. Xiaomei has been working as a prostitute in Beijing for three years. After a row with her boyfriend, she decides to travel to the inhospitable town of Beidaihe to commit suicide. In this completely deserted place, she gets to know a young man, a poet, who takes his life shortly afterward. When the policeman Deng Jianguo questions Xiaomei about the incident, he realises that she too wants to commit suicide. He employs drastic methods to stop her from doing so...

Welcome to reality

In the 1990s, urban reality soon became a topic for young independent directors. They consciously chose a small form to present in a natural way, as it were, post-Maoist reality close up: alcoholism, prostitution and suicide included. Two unsparing portraits of life beyond the boundaries of state-regulated existence.