Review by Gorrman Lee.

Director Li Yu’s Lost In Beijing tells an odd story of love, lust, rape, extortion, child bearing, and kidnapping. The plot sounds dark, but Li Yu manages to inject a lot of humour into this “dramedy”.

The boss of a massage-parlour, Lin Dong, stumbles into one of the massage rooms one day to find Liu Pingguo, one of his employees, drunk on the bed. Pingguo is madly in love with her husband, window washer An Kun, and is drunkenly fantasizing about the sex they had the previous night. When Lin Dong tries to remove Pingguo before a customer can see her in her drunken state, Pingguo begins to make advances at her boss, mistaking him for her husband. Now aroused, Lin Dong takes advantage of the situation and rapes Pingguo - while An Kun the window washer watches from outside. He now sees an opportunity to extort Lin Dong for money, essentially asking for money in exchange for not reporting the rape to the police.

I won’t spoil the rest of the story, but I will say that the film touches on an important issue in mainland Chinese culture. It seems that throughout the film, Pingguo is just being screwed around but the men in her life. In fact, all of the women in the film are just being screwed around. An Kun uses his wife’s rape as an excuse to get money, never once thinking about how it might affect her. When he negotiates a deal with Lin Dong, the two men basically plan out Pingguo’s life without ever asaking her what she wants. All the while Lin Dong’s own wife witnesses everything. The film is truly about the evil that men do to women, and given how Chinese culture is especially patriarchal, this film should speak to many women.

Aside from its powerful approach to important issues, Lost In Beijing gets lost in between two genres. It is far too comedic to be a serious drama, and even too overtop to be considered a dramedy (or dark comedy), yet it is too dark to be a light-hearted comedy. That said, if you are prepared to laugh as much as you will cry, you will really enjoy this film.

Lost in Beijing
Li Yu | China | 2007 | 113min

Thur. Oct. 4 | 9:30pm | Ridge Theatre
Mon. Oct. 8 | 11:30am | Empire Granville Theatre
Thur. Oct. 11 | 9:30pm | Empire Granville Theatre