Still Life

I went to the cinema today. I'm quite fond of Asian films, more particularly the calmer type with stories from "real life". There have been quite a few of them lately.

The Chinese film I watched is called "Still Life" (Sanxia haoren - 三峡好人) and started its Paris career this week in a rather limited number of cinemas. I thought the place would as often be half empty. Surprise. I could hardly get in, people struggled to get a place and two rather distinguished gentlemen, even more surprisingly, started to fight - courageously stopped by an elderly woman.

There are two parallel stories about a husband looking for his wife and a wife looking for her husband. The (slow) action takes place in a small town which will be flooded due the construction of the Three Gorge dam on the Yangtze river (totally some 1,4 million people will be displaced).

The film got the Golden Lion Award in the last Venice film festival. I liked it a lot.

Tomorrow, Sunday, cinemas will be empty. At 20 hours we will get the result of the presidential elections.