Peacock (Kong que) (tbc)
- Run time: 2 hours 24 mins
- Language: Mandarin
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 18th February 2005
- Starring: Zhang Jingchu, Feng Li, Lu Yulai
- Directed by: Gu Changwei
Plot Synopsis
The debut feature by 'Fifth Generation' cinematographer Gu Changwei, Peacock is set in small-town China 25 years ago, at the start of the transition from Maoist dictatorship to a market economy. A working-class family in Anyang has three children: a hulking elder son left a bit 'simple' by cerebral fever, an impulsive daughter lost in romantic dreams and a smart younger son who gets less parental attention than the others. Each of the kids gets his/her own 'chapter' of the story, essentially a patchwork of domestic incidents, crises and small, surreal epiphanies tracing the impact on these individuals of a social context that's being rewritten from year to year. (First-time writer Li Qiang, now in great demand, admits that a strand of personal memories runs through it.) It adds up to a wise and faintly melancholy account of family life and emotional adjustments, the best of its kind since Edward Yang's A One and a Two... A top prizewinner in Berlin, it boasts sterling performances from a cast of newcomers, superb cinematography by the London-based Yang Shu - and a keen sense of the gap between personal hopes and familial expectations.