"Actor: Chen Manyuan"

• Little Red Flowers | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the semi-autobiographical novel Could be Beautiful by Wang Shuo the best-selling 'bad boy' of contemporary Chinese literature Little Red Flowers is a poignant and touching drama. Directed by independent producer and award winning director Zhang Yuan (Beijing Bastards Seventeen Years) Little Red Flowers tells the story of Qiang (Dong Bowen) a four-year-old little rebel... a clever child with sparkly eyes and a precociously indomitable will. His father deposits him at a well-appointed residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing since his parents are often away. Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society. But it's not so easy for Qiang to adapt to this kind of carefully organized minutely scrutinized collective life. A fierce individualist in miniature he tries but fails to conform to the model his teachers enforce. Yet he still craves the reward that the other students win: the little red flowers awarded each day as tokens for good behaviour. But Qiang doesn't win any flowers: he can't yet dress himself and doesn't play together with the other kids. He even dares to talk back to the strict Teacher Li (Zhao Rui) and Principal Kong when they try to impose some discipline on him. Gradually his charisma and bravado start to win over his classmates: their stealthy little rebellions gain steam when he succeeds in convincing everyone that Teacher Li is a child-eating monster in disguise. When their attempt to capture her is thwarted Qiang's resistance develops a more disturbing dimension and he is forcibly ostracized from his companions. Will he succumb to the adult-enforced conformity around him or will he insist on growing up his own way by his own rules?