MUBI

U.K.-based Chinese novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo (“An Archeologist’s Sunday” & “How Is Your Fish Today?”) makes her narrative feature debut with this quirky little personal journey which made a hit and miss impact on the International festival circuit including the 62nd Locarno International Film Festival where it picked up the Golden Leopard.

The Hamburg Film Festival award-winning screenplay follows alienated young Chinese woman Li Mei (Huang Lu) as she drifts from her village home to the back streets of Chongqing, where she hooks up with small time gangster Spikey (Wei Yi Bo), and then on to London, with retired teacher Mr. Hunt (Geoffrey Hutchings) and cafe owner Rachid (Chris Ryman).

Huang Lu (“The Red Awn” & “Blind Mountain”) puts in a curiously unengaged performance as the Emo-styled lead who seemingly revels in the audience’s sympathy as she suffers abuse and neglect at the hands of classically trained Geoffrey Hutchings, not so classically trained Chris Ryman and newcomer Wei Yi Bo as the nefarious men in her life.

The burgeoning director seems somewhat unsure in this faltering move into narrative filmmaking and the result is a flawed but fascinating story of a young woman’s journey from East to West which revels in cultural stereotypes but nonetheless maintains a curious ring of authenticity and should engage on some level with all but the most cynical viewer.

“East of this line is the East, and west of this line is the West.”