Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

Released 1998
Stars Lu Lu, Lopsang
Directed by Joan Chen

Joan Chen's "Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl" is set in 1975, when the madness of the Cultural Revolution was still destroying the lives of millions of Chinese. A plague of fanaticism was upon the land. Wen Xiu (the title is her nickname) lives in the provincial city of Chengdu, goes to school, has a boyfriend, wears blouses sewn by her father, a tailor. Then she is selected to be "sent down" to a remote rural area, where as a city girl she can have her revolutionary values renewed by living with the proletariat. Countless others were also exiled from home, family and friends by such directives.

The girl is sent to the high steppes near Tibet, to live in the tent of a horse herder named Lao Jin. A wide river snakes through the territory, hardly seeming to flow. Lao Jin's tent, patched and leaky to the cold winds, is considered a safe haven because it is known in the district that he was castrated by "enemy soldiers" (their nationality unclear). Xiu Xiu is not a brave, independent heroine, a woman warrior; she is a kid, homesick and frightened, and not very sophisticated about her situation.

Life with Lao Jin is painted by Chen as essentially a lonely exile in a faraway place, where the man does most of the work and Xiu Xiu behaves much as a teenager might if she were sent to the farm for the summer. She is modest, undresses behind curtains, treats Lao Jin in an almost condescending fashion, does not see how much he cares for her, and about her. On the day when she has been away for six months, she puts on her nice sweater and a scarf, expecting officials to come and return her to her home. They do not come. She has essentially been forgotten. One day a passing stranger tells her that there are ways a pretty girl can buy her way home. And soon, after an abrupt transition, she is having sex with him--and then with a series of men who all promise they can get her sent back to Chengdu, although why would they bother, when it is so pleasant to have her convenient to their needs?

Because Lao Jin is an inarticulate peasant and Xiu Xiu is a naive and immature girl, there is little dialogue between them. This is not a movie about opposites attracting, but about two fellow prisoners who scarcely speak the same language. We are invited to interpret their looks, their silences and their feelings--especially Lao Jin's passive sadness as Xiu Xiu is violated. The resolution of their stories, when it comes, is almost inevitable.

Summary written by Roger Ebert