Review | Berlin 2022: Return to Dust movie review – Chinese director Li Ruijun finds bleak poetry in an arranged marriage between two villagers

The tender, heartwarming relationship between a hard-working farmer and an abused woman is at the heart of Return to Dust by Chinese writer-director Li Ruijun

Wu Renlin, who stars as the farmer, shines in a deeply humane film that also deals with the conflict between rural traditions and increasing modernisation

Reading Time:2 minutes

Hai Qing (left) and Wu Renlin in a still from Return to Dust, directed by Li Ruijun. Photo: Hucheng No.7 Films Ltd

Published: 11:00am, 14 Feb 2022Updated: 11:10am, 14 Feb 2022

4/5 stars

In a time when toxic masculinity is a prevalent topic in films, it’s refreshing to see a work about a good man.

Return to Dust is the latest effort from Chinese writer-director Li Ruijun and his first feature-length film since 2017’s Walking Past the Future. At its centre is a farmer named Ma (Wu Renlin). Fair, tender and hard-working, he is not a man who likes to be in anyone’s debt. “This is this, that is that,” he says, more than once, as he settles his accounts.

Early in the film, which is set in Gansu province in northwest China, Ma meets Guiying (Hai Qing), the woman destined to become his wife in an arranged marriage.

Bullied and beaten as a child, she is infertile and unable to control her bladder, frequently wetting herself, and barely speaks in the film’s first half. “Her life is miserable,” remarks one villager, a fact later confirmed when she reveals that she used to live in a shed in her brother’s backyard.

Ma treats her with love and affection. Only once does he lose his temper with her, when she falls over trying to load corn onto a rickety cart pulled by their faithful donkey, and within minutes he is trying to cheer her up again.