VIFF 2009 | Cow at Schema : more than ethnic

VIFF 2009 | Cow

Cow
China, 2009, 105min
DIR: Guan Hu

While VIFF's Dragons & Tigers series is no stranger to films from China, this is a rarity. Usually VIFF's Chinese films are independents, which are officially illegal in China but able to travel far and wide to eager audiences around the world. Cow, on the other hand, was made by the Changchun Film Group, China's largest film studio, and fully supported by the State. Being a story about WWII, one might expect thinly-veiled propaganda; instead, Cow is an oddly touching, slickly produced, black-as-night historical comedy.

Niu Er awakens from unconsciousness for the first (of many) time(s) in the film to see his small, rural village nearly destroyed by Japanese bombs and his fellow villagers dead. Desparately searching for survivors, Niu Er finds just one - a large dairy cow donated to the village by the Dutch government. The rest of the film follows Niu Er and the cow as they form an unbreakable bond feeding starving villagers, escaping assassins and unwittingly joining the resistance against the Japanese incursion (on the propaganda front, the anti-Japanese sentiment is strong but not unilateral). Cow eventually becomes an absurd and thoroughly enjoyable love story.

Schema Magazine's coverage of VIFF 2009 is sponsored by the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival