OILMAKER'S FAMILY (The Woman from the Lake of Scented Souls), with Siqin Gaowa, Wu Yujuan, Lei Kesheng, Chen Baoquo and Jing Lei. Directed by Xie Fei. Category II. At Columbia Classics.
XIE Fei's award-winning Oilmaker's Family has a syrupy look that should appeal to Western eyes and admirers of ''quality'' film-making, but also a theme of which the Chinese authorities would approve.
Unlike other renowned mainland art-house efforts such as Judou and Raise the Red Lantern, which earned bans for their negative depiction of China, Oilmaker's Family portrays prosperity and economic success in the rural areas.
Winner of the Golden Bear with The Wedding Banquet at the Berlin Film Festival, there is more to the film than propaganda.
The director of the existentialist Black Snow has brewed a rural drama about women all at sea as feudalism meets modernisation head on.
The message: modernisation without understanding leads to confusion and produces lost souls who are either too parochial, or uneducated to know how to deal with change.
That is true of our protagonist, Xiang Ersao (played by Siqin Gaowa), who sweats for her family like a traditional dutiful wife, but has also had a 20-year affair.
