Qinghong/Shanghai Dreams (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2005)

The original title of this incredible Wang Xiaoshuai film is "Qinghong", whose two characters - "qing" and "hong" - mean, respectively, green and red. For something seemingly so simple, it works on myriad levels. The first is that "Qinghong" is, of course, the name of the main character, the eldest daughter of a family who left Shanghai in the Sixties during the Cultural Revolution as part of Mao's "Third Line of Defence" (to, as Philip French explains, "disperse essential industries in the face of a threatened Soviet invasion") and who now long to return to Shanghai. On a second level, "qinghong" is also a fundamental reference to contrast: green against red, primary colour against primary colour, the colour of peace and nature against the colour of violence and blood (a major theme in the film) - the Chinese version of Stendhalian red and black. This is shown in the very first shot: a window opening out into a soothing backdrop of green hills, before a tiny splash of red (presumably the red of the Chinese national flag) drifts slightly into the frame of the window, disturbing that window of green and foreshadowing the disruption and violence to come. On a third level, "qinghong" also recalls a Mandarin phrase: "不分青红皂白" (bufen qinghong zaobai), which literally means "not telling apart green, red or white", ie the inability to distinguish, be it good or bad, right or wrong etc, a theme which, again, plays large in the film. The words, "qinghong", in the title, thus, highlight numerous ideas in the film; much nuance is truly lost in its English translation of "Shanghai Dreams" (I suppose "Green/Red" would not have made much sense either).

Yet, for a film which plays so much on its visual figurals of contrasting colour, it also uses sound in completely astonishing ways. I have seldom watched a film where so much is communicated by sound alone: the oppressiveness of the regime and the repressive squalor of the rural village are communicated at once by the very first sound we hear - the blaring over a loudspeaker of mechanical counting for a morning exercise routine - as well as the second - the automated, emotionless thump of a factory machine, an important sound whose reprise subsequently underscores one of the film's most emotional scenes. The dictatorial father, particularly in his scenes with Qinghong, is almost always heard, never seen - in one memorable scene where he berates his daughter at length for carrying on a romance with a local boy, he is shown pacing up and down outside her room, his head almost always deliberately out of frame. Like the blaring loudspeaker, power - state or family - is exerted through sound, and somehow all the more pernicious for the lack of any physical form. Crucial plot points are heard rather than seen, such as a scene of violence near the end of the film, as well as its resolution, tellingly brought across to us in the staccato cracks of unseen gunfire. Lastly, the progress of a car journey at the end of the film, the camera focussing only on the anxious faces of the family, is marked through the increasing noises surrounding the car as well as the driver's impatient honking. Without seeing anything else, without needing to see anything else, we know the car is slowing down, or we know the car has stopped. The film counts so much on its visuals, as signified by its title, as well as for its little touches: Xiaozhen's florid scarf, oddly out of place in the drab village, but which we realise she wears all the time as it is probably the only pretty thing she owns; the forearm sleeves we see Qinghong wear, telling us more vocally than anything else the poverty of the family (presumably because they cannot afford long-sleeved winter clothing, which is thereby made up of short-sleeved summer clothing with added strips of cloth as removable arm sleeves); the father holding up his son's accordian teacher's music score, and we realise it is because they cannot afford a music bookstand. Yet, all these little visual details only make it all the more amazing how much Wang also communicates without letting us see anything.

In "Qinghong", everything is pit against something else, and at the end of the film, everything flips from one to the other. One of the very first events in the film underscores this: Qinghong is given a pair of high heel shoes by her boyfriend; after school, with much coaxing from her friend, Xiaozhen, she puts them on and takes a few steps, modelling the shoes for her friend, her face radiant with happiness and young love. Too soon, however, she is seen by her father and, too proud to take the shoes off, she walks on home with her father sternly following behind; she is whistled at but, too conscious of the glower of paternal disapproval behind her, she is mortified and humiliated. What was an innocent parade of a lover's gift has now become a walk of shame and embarrassment. And so does everything else pivot and flip and turn sour: love becomes violence, what was hoped to be an honourable departure becomes a stealthy sneaking off at dawn. Even a film strip, as Xiaozhen and Lujun drive through an open cinema, is shown to be projected inversely; the Mandarin characters of the subtitles appear flipped right to left. And while we are left to wonder the fate of the family as they trundle off in their van towards Shanghai, it is difficult to feel optimistic for them in the face of everything else, for too easily dreams can also turn into nightmares.