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| Directed by Joan Chen; Starring Lu Lu, Lopsang, Jie Gao, Wengqiang Wang, Jiangchi Min, Li QianQan, and Lu Yue |
Xiu Xiu (Lu Lu) is a sixteen year old girl in China in the 1970’s during the Cultural Revolution, who decides to join in on a little thing where students are in a army type regime. During the last few months of the regime, Xiu Xiu is sent to the Chinese hills to be the apprentice for a neutered horse trainer for six months named Lao Jin (Lopsang). During the course of the six months, Lao Jin begins to have feelings for the harsh and uncaring Xiu Xiu. She is young and unaware of what true love means, but Lao Jin, well into his fifties if not older, has been through so much pain and loneliness in his life that Xiu Xiu becomes his life. When she begins to take on prostitution to get a pass home, the real pain is in the eyes of Lao Jin, who comes to understand that there will not and could not have ever been anything between the two of them, they are just too different.
A moody and subtle film, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl is a lyrical portrait of love and pain, forever unflinching. Directed by the Joy Luck Club and The Last Emperor actress Joan Chen under the strictest of conditions (she had to smuggle the film out of China since she filmed it without the government’s approval and now she is banned from working in the country), the film’s only major flaw seems to be in the pacing, a problem I believe that Chen would have fixed had she been able to watch the daily work or reshoot (another casualty to the lack of government cooperation). The two leads are unbelievable, especially Lopsang, who gives more of a performance in his eyes than Matt Dillon in his entire body of work. That is not to take away from Lu Lu who gives quite the performance for a girl aged only 17. Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl is not only an important film politically, but also artistically.
