Living in the Land
(Sheng xi zhi di)

Le Temps des moissons is bookended by two drastically different funerals. The first takes place on a hot summer’s day, crowded with local well-wishers and unfolding with brash, religious bombast; the second occurs in sombre mid-winter, is sparsely attended, and ends with odd squeals and whimpers. Set in what its child protagonist describes as “the poorest village in the whole world,” Huo Meng’s third feature portrays contemporary China’s changing fortunes through the anguish, anxiety, and agitation of the rural poor as the country plunges headlong into its market-driven future in 1991. Focusing on those left to march on with gritted teeth, Huo offers a near-anthropological portrait of a vanishing agrarian way of life. And life goes on — and so it must.
Clarence Tsui