Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

I love this movie... It's such a sad film. It's sad enough to speak of love for such sad things. It starts off so pretty and happy. Such bright colors, pretty sky... then everything just changes. The colors never change, it is always pretty outside.. but the nights are what makes it sad. It made me feel angry of all the things that went wrong in this film... i wanted to be there, to help somehow... everything in this film is done so artisicly. The end of the movie is a perfect way to end sorrow. There is no better way to end something, than to simply end it. I recommend it to all who want to be touched. This is something that will never be done again. Nothing else like it. 10/10 for this one.

Though there was the usual disclaimer at the end regarding persons living or dead, this film has an undeniable authentic feel.

The Tibetan country-side is at once breathtaking and desolate; a perfect setting for a tale of unimaginable brutality. Far from overwhelming the movie, the music underscores Chen's theme of suffering and injustice visited upon young Chinese girls who were separated from their families and sent to places unknown, never to be heard from or seen again; young girls who were in effect disappeared. This is a film that will stay with me for a long time to come.

This is a very powerful movie about a very important and real subject. It made its point very forcefully with the use of strong and explicit scenes that I'm afraid have been with me ever since I watched this movie and promise to appear in my mind day and night for quite some time. I hate to say that I wish I hadn't seen a well-made movie, but that is the case here. If you are very emotionally affected by movies like I am, I recommend that you pick up a good book about the history of sexual politics in China instead.

Xiu Xiu is a beautifully made movie in which Joan Chen combines sumptuous visual imagery, a beautiful, delicate musical score, fine performances by her actors and a spare and intelligent script to produce a simple, moving story of two lost lives.

The movement of the story from the dark confines of the tent Xiu Xiu and Lao Jin share to the almost limitless prairies and big skys of the Tibetan highlands follows the emotional pulse of the film. Expert camera work creates perspectives that sweep from the touchingly intimate to the overwhelmingly vast, exploring the characters from inside and out.

Wonderful, economical performances from newcomer Lu Lu and Tibetan stage veteran Lopsang give profound and touching insight into the extraordinariness of two ordinary people. Chen saves the story from descent into melodrama by a precise and thoughtful restraint that respects, observes, and never intrudes to seek to "explain" or apologize.

A film worth going out of one's way to see.

Director Joan Chen has fashioned a lovely, slow-moving film, "Xiu Xiu - the Sent Down Girl" about the abuses of the Chinese Cultural Revolution seen through the eyes of one girl, Xiu Xiu. Yet the film is more than a tale about the misguided totalitarian state and its pervasive influence on everyone's lives. "Xiu Xiu" is also about a special relationship between the girl and her mentor and protector, Jao Lin. It would be an oversimplification to call it a love story because the film only hints at any romance between the two (Xiu Xiu spends much of the film in contempt of Jao). Indeed their contrasting lives could not be more pronounced. Jao Lin is a horse herder, a man of the soil, one who cleans himself when it rains, and a victim of a castration leaving him without his manhood. The much younger girl, Xiu Xiu, is from the modern city, doing her duty until she can return to her loving family and to a boy who yearns for her; she with the soft, innocent smile, and the daintiness to appreciate a kaleidoscope or a freshly dug waterhole. They must live together in one tent for six months because ‘headquarters' has mandated that Xiu Xiu learn horse herding. While adapting to each other's needs, Xiu Xiu seems to have the upper hand on Lao (she bosses him around like a hired hand) but there is a strange, intuitive feeling between them that is really not appreciated until the very last scene. As the story develops, six months have passed and Xiu Xiu still cannot return home because her family is too poor to bribe officials to take her back. At the heart of this film is the evil that those in power do to those who are too weak to fight them. Men from ‘headquarters' regularly have sex with Xiu Xiu, sometimes with the frustrated Lao in the same tent, since Xiu Xiu mistakenly assumes these men will help her get back home. All Lao can do is watch because even as he tries to protect Xiu Xiu in other ways, he is powerless to stop what is going on. What develops, slowly but surely, is another side of Lao, besides the father figure - he becomes a man who can touch but cannot possess what he wants. The latter is made clear when Lao steals Xiu Xiu's shoe and then lies to her that a man has come to steal her shoe so that he can return later to tell her of his love. "Xiu Xiu - the Sent Down Girl" succeeds in giving us a poignancy about innocence lost and about the deep meaning of sacrifice and love.