Under the Hawthorn Tree (2010)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Zhang Yimou reportedly auditioned 10,000 girls in search of untarnished, innocent (old school Chinese) beauty when looking to cast the lead in this film."These young folks are looking worse and worse with each generation. Pretty girls obviously aren't marrying handsome guys these days. They're hooking up with this sugar daddy and that old lonely bachelor with money. No wonder the kids are lacking in the looks department.When you look at any picture of young Chinese women from the 60s and 70s period, you'll almost always have an eager face that radiates innocent beauty looking back at you. This is now a thing of the past, young folks rarely have that innocence about them any more."I read that before seeing this film and it put an awful lot of pressure on the young actress who passed the audition. She's cute, but she's no Gong Li. She's hardly a Zhang Ziyi either, but that may have more to do with the way the film is assembled than anything else.I'm a BIG fan of Zhang Yimou's common people films. I love his nostalgic looks at the past and his thinly veiled commentaries on the Cultural Revolution and cultural change in general, in China. But Zhang seems to have tossed this one off before finishing a proper script. Title cards are used to fill in narrative gaps (red flag) and to allow for fade-to-black wistful shots of the girl biting her lower lip, pouting, and looking like the innocent beauty Zhang craves. I think the need for fade-to-black wistful shots of the girl biting her lower lip and pouting suggests he didn't find it.The film is adapted from a popular mainland novel which was based on a true story set during the Cultural Revolution. There's lots of good stuff and great attention to detail concerning the period, and it satisfied my desire for that. There's a pretty standard love story, complete with terminal disease tugs at your heart strings, plopped on top of it all. And not just a love story, but a Japanese styled "pure love" love story. That part is fine as well. A little Korean style melodrama mixed with some Japanese pure love stylings works for me most of the time. So why didn't I love this movie?Honestly, the title cards bothered me. Not just because the girl bit her lip and pouted going into many of them (which got on my nerves, as well), but because they gave the film an unfinished quality. It's difficult to remain completely faithful to a novel when adapting it for the big screen, and just as voice-over narration can be used successfully to fill in narrative gaps, or it can stick out like a sore thumb, so go the title cards."Sun told Jing that he would be waiting for her upon her return"Sticks out like a sore thumb.To be fair, dancer and senior high school girl, Zhou Dongyu, from Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, with "eyes that are clear like the mountain springs", is pretty fetching as the young girl who is sent to re-education camp and falls in love with an upwardly mobile land prospector. The film's theme of with whom and when one falls in love being up to the discretion of Communist Party leaders is far more tragic than the terminal disease. Shawn Dou Xiao is outrageously handsome and appealing as the young man who falls in love with her.Under the Hawthorne Tree is delicately shot and filled with wonderful period detail. My final waffling verdict is: It's a beautiful and tragic love story with some distracting blemishes. If Zhang Yimou had spent as much time fleshing out a proper screenplay as he did finding a girl to play the lead character he might have produced another masterpiece. I recommend the film to those who like pure love stories.

After the debacle that was A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (2009), a disappointing remake of the Coens' Blood Simple (1984), Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou restores his reputation with his latest effort that is a nostalgic throwback to the pre-Hero period in the nineties that made the director one of the few Asian masters of the dramatic form. Under the Hawthorn Tree is clearly not Zhang at the top of his game, but it is a reminder of his talent in crafting powerful tearjerkers set in the various turbulent eras of China's modern history.Hawthorn Tree is similar to The Road Home (2000) in approach. It is a beautiful love story acted out by a competent cast, at times playful, at times emotional, but never too overtly sentimental. This is especially so for Hawthorn Tree, which some have described as "the purest love story ever told", and I believe it just might be true. I have not seen a filmmaker approach the near-ancient notion of "love at first sight" and "the blossoming of a boy-girl romance" with such purity and subtlety in direction and narration in years.Zhang has unearthed a new acting gem in Zhou Dongyu, a young actress who may just be the next "Gong Li", that is if she continues to place herself under the director's radar for the next decade. Like Zhang Ziyi, who similarly made her debut in The Road Home, Zhou's acting is striking because she balances restrain with her natural ability to emote, the latter very potently displayed in the film's final act. Her chemistry with the male lead, played by Shawn Dou, who is also a newcomer, is strong enough for Zhang to heavily rely on to engage viewers.As always for every Zhang film, the cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding (an Oscar nominee for House of Flying Daggers (2004)), is stunning, as the film captures and juxtaposes the misty villages with dusty urban buildings in great visual detail. Admirers of Zhang's visual style however would notice that Hawthorn Tree does not feature the flamboyant colors that characterize most of his works such as Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Hero (2002), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Yes, the color palette is more muted here, and there is a reason for it.I would think Zhang desires to paint a more poetic picture rather than being unnecessarily grandeur. After all, this is a film about the innocence of first love. With Under the Hawthorn Tree, Zhang has made a romance picture that is not only memorable for the star performance by Zhou, but also admirable for the film's artful simplicity.GRADE: B+ (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved

Under The Hawthorn Tree is on the surface a simple love story, but indeed it is also a subtle political satire on the evils of the Communist Party.1. At the beginning of the movie, the girl believes the red flowers represent the Communist heroes and talks about the "rumor" in the textbook. The ending shows us that it is only propaganda used to promote the heroes and the white flowers of the same tree remind the girl of her boyfriend, instead of the heroes. What's more, the tree which used to symbolize the heroes is now submerged by the water because of a new project. It implies that changes are inevitable as time goes by.2. Why does the nurse say to the girl that the boy does not have an incurable disease? The Communist Party is probably trying to cover up the truth.3. The girl is always expected to take the volleyball back during the game, which shows communism is not void of hierarchy.4. The main characters' parents are also victims under Communist rule.5. The Communist Party song gives me goose pimples. The Communist Party is even closer to you than your parents are? 6. People under Communist rule are deprived of freedom. The girl even dares not call the boy intimately, which leads to the regret.On the whole, it is a poetic and beautifully shot love story with a charismatic cast with different nuances of facial expression. Despite the awkward silences showing the time shifts with written words, I am deeply impressed by the creative mixture of romance and political satire.

Zhang Yimou returns to a more basic form of film-making in this touching story of innocent love from China's Cutural Revolution era. Very strong performances add substance to an otherwise simple story of young lovers burdened by societal difficulties in their efforts to be together. Ms. Zhou is very good in her role as a young, innocent woman who meets a special boy, Shawn Dou, amid the turbulence of China's revolutionary years. Both girl and boy are sent to the country-side to labor under Mao's crazed design for social re-ordering. The film does not focus so much on the madness of the times as on the fear of being labeled politically incorrect which, coupled with the socially conservative norms of traditional China, serve to encumber the innocent desire to be together. A slow but nicely filmed story of heartache and heartbreak.