She, a Chinese

Twenty-something Li Mei (Lu Huang) drifts between jobs in the Chonqing region of China (formally known as Chungking) working in low paid jobs and finding herself mixed up with the wrong sort. Eventually she arrives in London as a tourist and begins working in a massage parlour where she gets to know one of her older clients, English man Geoffrey (Geoffrey Hutchings). She ends up marrying him for a visa and soon finds that she is struggling to adapt to her new country.

This Anglo-Chinese film directed by Xiaolu Guo is truly a global one and one that addresses challenges for the working class or underclass who try to adapt to this global world in search of a better life. Both for a western or Chinese audience it highlights those concerns well, although there are points of flatness in the film and it doesn't really provide any answers other than "it just is".

This international film festival award winner did not disappoint me, not particularly impressive but still inspiring. The film is a beautiful and delicate work. It revolves the story of a Chinese girl who moved from one place to another and tried to pursue something invisible and uncatchable. I read Xiaolu Guo's books before. Guo truly got talent in portraying and conveying the sense of loneliness deep inside the hearts of modern people. I love movies, every movie to me is a unique journey to different places. And this time Xiaolu Guo took me travelling from city to city, letting me have reflections on my own identity and a thorough thinking of what I am running after. The film covers quite a lot of topics, from love to hate, discussing what really matters to us, what a life we are looking for. Having the story developing in a believable way is a tribute to the director and actors. Huang Lu gave a solid performance this time, successfully making the character alive in audience's mind.It is a film about people and people, about people and city. Not a must-see one, but won't regret if you watch it.

I think the rating is a bit low for this film... From the backwards peasant village,to the major city in chonqing,to the "bright lights" of London...was there any difference from either of these locations? All were dreary,following a young girl who,when you look at it just wanted to be loved and love someone herself. I think the lead actress was absolutely superb and there are some truly heartbreaking moments in this film,especially noticing how in one way or the other every Male she meets abuses her in some way or the other... I personally really enjoyed this film,in a depressing way albeit,and I would highly recommend people to watch it,I always believe a good film should stir emotion in you,this certainly did in me especially making me teary eyed over the depressing ending...

I don't understand all the praise for this picture and awarding it at the festival - what for? On the one hand, I feel pity for the main character who is so unlucky with men and love life, or actually sex life because there was merely any love in those relationships; on the other hand, however, I am convinced that she is to blame for her own fate: most of her decisions to start the relationships were totally inconsiderate. Was she so naive or so stupid? I believe that everyone is responsible for one's actions, and if we happen to make a mistake, we should learn from it. This was something that Li Mei doesn't do. I also can't help the impression that while the girl is portrayed as an innocent and pure creature, a victim, all the men around her turn out to be bad primitive beasts, who are incapable of true love. This is not real life!

I am enjoying this straightforward story, shown on Film 4, initially set in modern contemporary China, free from censorship and which portrays through the eyes of the bored, restless young woman and the life she leads needed simply to move on.

Those of us, yes, myself included, who had to move away from staid, quiet rural backwaters and just 'set-off', will feel an affinity, an earthy matter-of-fact rawness about just doing what happens to come along, whether wise, or unwise.

All film producing countries have such tales of passage and morality and this succeeds by being slightly documentary in style and paying the same emphasis to all that happens, thus neither promoting or dramatising them; whether that's the routine preparation of a duck for eating or finding a miniature British gin bottle and keeping it as a souvenir where her father is scouring out a living on a vast rubbish site.

Filmed in 2008, the snapshot of a hugely changing China may already be out of date. But, should be seen, almost for just doing that. Romantically lolling in a landscape fringed by a forest of cranes over huge skeletons of grey, unfinished buildings and then an oxen led by a farmer plods by. The girl asks to listens to her boyfriend's I-Pod on colour-matching headphones. His designer sunglasses hint so strongly to the draw of the West and how, falsely, of course, how London etc has become the exotic land of dreams, via simplistic and overemphasised stereotyped icons.

I'm not going to comment on the girl's plight or make any judgements. Yes, as I said, it is a story of that's been told a thousand times but this is fresh, with natural, sweary dialogue and situations that range from the mundane to the bizarre (but believable). It does side-step some moral issues simply to keep the story flowing and gives us a glimpse of our culture through the eyes of an emotionally bruised but determined youth.

I wasn't relishing watching this, due to the (few) not-so-favourable reviews but overall I found it unpretentious, fresh and largely interesting tale and without the oh-so obvious finger-wagging that can accompany such a rites of passage tale. There's also some suitably enigmatic soundtrack music from John Parish.