Xiu Xiu is one of many young people transplanted from their homes in the city to the countryside in an ill-fated attempt by the government to enforce an exchange-type program. The aims might have originally been noble, but this story is about one fictitious girl who suffers greatly because she is dumped "in the middle of nowhere" and is forgotten. Life as a nomadic horse herder doesn't suit this city girl well and her promised return home never materializes--making her desperate to do anything to get back.This is an interesting film because it is critical of the Chinese Communist regime of the 1960s--only something you might have seen in a film made in China in very recent years. It also talks about sexual abuse and exploitation. However, despite these being interesting topics, the overall product left me curiously flat and unimpressed--mostly because the characters were difficult to relate to, were amoral and were amazingly one-dimensional. This SHOULD have left me a lot more satisfied, as films with similar themes (such as "Lan feng zheng", otherwise known as THE BLUE KITE) but instead I just felt detached and wanted the film to end and end soon. I wanted to like this film a lot more than I actually did.FYI--Parents, this film is not appropriate for younger viewers both because of sexual content and because the birth scene is pretty gross. Think twice before letting your kids see this one.

Tian Yu directed by veteran Chinese actress Joan Chen is a bold film which is completely different both in style as well as content from those of other Chinese films made by fifth and sixth generation film makers.Soon after its filming its anti Chinese communist party stance had angered the Chinese cultural authorities to such an extent that it is still banned in China.Much of the film's strength lies in its choice of far off landscapes which add surreal beauty to the film.The film is sad as a young girl is sent away from her home to initiate a communist party sponsored reeducation process but she becomes a victim of sexual slavery.This is a real story which underscores not only the plight of the film's protagonist but also of countless ordinary girls whose happiness was snatched by the official brutality of the omnipotent communist party ideology.Top notch scenes of the film include sequences in which the young protagonist is forced to live in a far off settlement with a Tibetan eunuch.This unexpected event gives rise to emotional bonding between two people cut off from human civilization.

Even though Tian yu (Xiu-Xiu) is a deeply moving film, one could sit back complacently thinking that something like this could never happen in America. Yet, Million Dollar Baby shows us that it can. Two excellent films. Of course, the movies are very different in many ways, but I was intrigued by some key parallels. In both, the male lead is an older man who develops a special, non sexual love for the female lead. Both men, for quite different reasons blame themselves for the situations the women eventually find themselves in, and both help in the ultimate solution, at the cost of their own lives. But they are not to blame: in each case society has trapped the women into intolerable situations from which there is ultimately only one escape. The nurse who gloats that "she'll never do that again" after Maggie tries to pull out her life support is no less despicable than the nurses who deride Xiu-Xiu for what she has become, or the men who take advantage of her. We may view the system that forgot Xiu-Xiu as malignant, but it is no less so than the "benign" system that dehumanizes Maggie. Xiu-Xiu is the sort of film one expects to see in human rights film festivals… and what about Million Dollar Baby?

I love this movie... It's such a sad film. It's sad enough to speak of love for such sad things. It starts off so pretty and happy. Such bright colors, pretty sky... then everything just changes. The colors never change, it is always pretty outside.. but the nights are what makes it sad. It made me feel angry of all the things that went wrong in this film... i wanted to be there, to help somehow... everything in this film is done so artisicly. The end of the movie is a perfect way to end sorrow. There is no better way to end something, than to simply end it. I recommend it to all who want to be touched. This is something that will never be done again. Nothing else like it. 10/10 for this one.