Handsomely executed and surprisingly critical Chinese film lacks traction where characters and development are indistinct to an outsider.
In Northern China in the early '90s. Dong Zijian (Ash Is the Purest White) the young lead completes high school, seeing the lid blow off a tank at local heavy industry plant, Dai City Tangjing chemical processing, with a worker carried along on it a comic surreal episode out of character with the rest of the film.
The boy's choice is sell cigarettes on the street or follow his father into the forbidding factory. There he finds himself in the crew of Shang Tielong a long time fitter who understands the factory community and Lu joins in the grim work and leisure activities.
He gets his first kiss roughly from the fat factory girl (what happens to her?) and competes with the white collar worker for the attention of appealing plant doctor Li Meng (Touch of Sin) in whose sick bay he stretches out in the pregnancy delivery stirrups. Lu's offer to bring down the suicidal girl worker from the tank scaffolding gets applause but the rival is able to talk her down without the risk. The two men become involved in a weird competition to see who can stay the longest in the communal baths with the heat all the way up.
Surprisingly the lady doctor comes around, in a (tame) make out session in an earthquake. Lu is persuaded to take night school and the girl finds herself at odds with indifferent management and leaves for Shanghai.
All this is nicely filmed in wide screen but often becomes incoherent, at least to an outsider. A few scenes are shot in monochrome for no obvious reason.
More intriguing than the plot is the picture of the joyless dead end employment in the shadow of the piled up coal, cooling towers, grim factory floors and rail tracks we see the late comer bicycle past, unmistakably an early condemnation of the county's fossil fuel industries, placing it along side Blind Shaft and Thin Ice Black Coal.
In Northern China in the early '90s. Dong Zijian (Ash Is the Purest White) the young lead completes high school, seeing the lid blow off a tank at local heavy industry plant, Dai City Tangjing chemical processing, with a worker carried along on it a comic surreal episode out of character with the rest of the film.
The boy's choice is sell cigarettes on the street or follow his father into the forbidding factory. There he finds himself in the crew of Shang Tielong a long time fitter who understands the factory community and Lu joins in the grim work and leisure activities.
He gets his first kiss roughly from the fat factory girl (what happens to her?) and competes with the white collar worker for the attention of appealing plant doctor Li Meng (Touch of Sin) in whose sick bay he stretches out in the pregnancy delivery stirrups. Lu's offer to bring down the suicidal girl worker from the tank scaffolding gets applause but the rival is able to talk her down without the risk. The two men become involved in a weird competition to see who can stay the longest in the communal baths with the heat all the way up.
Surprisingly the lady doctor comes around, in a (tame) make out session in an earthquake. Lu is persuaded to take night school and the girl finds herself at odds with indifferent management and leaves for Shanghai.
All this is nicely filmed in wide screen but often becomes incoherent, at least to an outsider. A few scenes are shot in monochrome for no obvious reason.
More intriguing than the plot is the picture of the joyless dead end employment in the shadow of the piled up coal, cooling towers, grim factory floors and rail tracks we see the late comer bicycle past, unmistakably an early condemnation of the county's fossil fuel industries, placing it along side Blind Shaft and Thin Ice Black Coal.
