Review | Berlin 2023: Art College 1994 movie review – Chinese animation director Liu Jian returns with slacker drama pondering art, life and love
- Have A Nice Day director Liu Jian returns with a story of students in China caught between traditional values and modernism in the early 1990s
- The slacker philosophising of its characters becomes a little tiresome after a while, but Liu’s unique animation style is stunning
3/5 stars
With some reservations the same can be said for his new movie, Art College 1994, which, like its predecessor, has taken a competition slot at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Set on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts, the ensemble story sees a group of male and female students talk about art, life and love, their lives casually intertwining.
This being the early 1990s, and with China opening up, influences from the West are pouring in. Rabbit and his friends Xiaojun and Youcai listen to Nirvana (one even buys a cassette of the grunge band’s third album, In Utero) and their dorm is covered in posters of Marlon Brando, Sylvester Stallone and Michael Jackson.
Beginning on screen with a quote from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the plot is casual, though not without humour. At one point, the boys use their artistic skills to fake an entry ticket to watch a screening of The Godfather trilogy.