"Actor: Yuanyuan Zhao"

• Beijing Bicycle | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Beijing Bicycle kicks off like an updated Chinese reworking of the 1948 Italian neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves: a worker, dependent on his bike for his job, has it stolen and doggedly sets out to get it back. But pretty soon Wang Xiaoshuai's film mutates into something more elemental: a battle of wills between peasant lad Guei, original owner of the bike, and Jian, a surly urban schoolkid who claims to have bought it second-hand. For both the bike is status: for Guei it secures him his job as a courier, while for Jian it lets him keep up with his peers and chat up the girl he fancies. Each sees himself as the rightful owner and neither will give way, so the bike swaps hands back and forth, stolen and re-stolen, as the duel waxes increasingly personal. There's a diverting subplot about a beautiful, stylishly dressed girl glimpsed by Guei who turns out be something other than she seems, but essentially the battle over the bike is the meat of the film. The fascination of Beijing Bicycle--perhaps especially for non-Chinese viewers--is its portrait of present-day Beijing as a buzzing, high-pressure, neo-capitalist boomtown, impersonal and seemingly as lawless as any Wild West frontier burg. At no point, in all the thefts and counter-thefts and mounting violence, does anyone think to call the police--everyone is left to fight his own battles. Wang, one can't help suspecting, is slipping in a hint of social criticism in this vision of an uncaring society where possessions are all that matter. On the DVD: Beijing Bicycle on disc has the original theatrical trailer (the French version, oddly enough), filmographies for the director and four of his lead actors, notes on the film by Nick Bradshaw and trailers for other Metro Tartan foreign-language DVD releases. The transfer's in the full anamorphic widescreen of the original, with good Dolby Digital sound. --Philip Kemp

• 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?

• The Sword Identity | DVD | (08/09/2014) from £7.94   |  Saving you £8.05 (50.30%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A sword that was meant to be abandoned. A warrior that seeks to honour its legacy. During the Ming Dynasty there lived four families each of them faithful keepers of martial arts. Those who wish to establish a new form or technique must fight their way through the families' gates. But one man's rejected request becomes a matter of death or honour and he is determined to prove that his sword is invincible!