Myriad of Lights

The title of Myriad of Lights refers to Shanghai itself, a place of seeming opportunity that more often could become a trap. Hu Zhiqing and his family are barely scraping by on his salary when one day his mother, brother and sister-in-law arrive from the country. Conditions there have become unbearable, and moreover they want to discover the city they believe has treated Zhiqing so well. But Zhiqing is fired from his job, and the strains of all the extra mouths to feed threaten his marriage. Unexpected reversals of fortune and plot twists abound, but what distinguishes Myriad of Lights from earlier socially conscious Chinese films is its much greater emphasis on class, seen in the introduction of Ah Zhen, Zhiqing’s factory worker cousin, whose help for the family becomes a rebuke for Zhiqing’s petit bourgeois pretensions. —Film Society of Lincoln Center