Chinese film-maker Jia Zhang-ke's new film 'A Touch of Sin' is made up of four stories loosely connected to each other. <!--more-->Zhou San (Wang Baoqiang) introduces us to the first of the four characters, a quiet man who seems to have a lot to hide. As with the other characters, Zhou San works away from home and thus separated from his family and home. Dahai (Jiang Wu) tells another story, a coal miner who won't stop pestering everyone about how his boss sold off the mine and got rich while never distributing the wealth to the village. One too many outbursts leads to a chain of events which ends badly.
The third story sees Hubei (Zhao Tao) working in a massage parlour as a receptionist, who is having an affair with a married man. Having waited so long for him to make up his mind, Hubei gives him 6 months to leave his wife. Troubles with work and her private life soon catch up with Hubei, as it does with the final character Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan). The youngest of the four characters, Xiao Hui drifts from job to job, seemingly in a permanent state of flux. He left his last job through an act of cowardice, involving a work-related accident with a colleague. Permanently broke and unable to find his feet anywhere, Hubei finds the struggle of keeping a job and sending money to his mother difficult to fathom.
'A Touch of Sin' exposes the four individuals struggles in modern China, revealing a growing discontent between the exploited working classes and the ruling elite which forces them to take measures into their own hands. Animals are metaphors for these people who are transported from place to place, who have no apparent control over their location or destiny. These lost souls are defined by a stark landscape of degradation, greed and corruption. There's nowhere to hide, each cannot continue with the life they've led, being controlled by others who gain everything and return very little. Each has to make a decision whether to become part of the system which will benefit themselves but lose all sense of morality and ethics, to avenge their ills, or to curl up and die.
'A Touch of Sin' starts off well, Dahai's story is one which will probably interest you the most. But the film is too long, and suffers from a second half which doesn't quite match the tension and drama of the first half. Its a bleak and unforgiving film, such is the pessimism in Zhang- Ke's dehumanised China that there is simply nowhere to run. In one scene, one characters asks another if he ever feels like travelling abroad. "Why would I?" he replies. "Everywhere is broke. Foreigners come here now." Welcome to the new China.
The third story sees Hubei (Zhao Tao) working in a massage parlour as a receptionist, who is having an affair with a married man. Having waited so long for him to make up his mind, Hubei gives him 6 months to leave his wife. Troubles with work and her private life soon catch up with Hubei, as it does with the final character Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan). The youngest of the four characters, Xiao Hui drifts from job to job, seemingly in a permanent state of flux. He left his last job through an act of cowardice, involving a work-related accident with a colleague. Permanently broke and unable to find his feet anywhere, Hubei finds the struggle of keeping a job and sending money to his mother difficult to fathom.
'A Touch of Sin' exposes the four individuals struggles in modern China, revealing a growing discontent between the exploited working classes and the ruling elite which forces them to take measures into their own hands. Animals are metaphors for these people who are transported from place to place, who have no apparent control over their location or destiny. These lost souls are defined by a stark landscape of degradation, greed and corruption. There's nowhere to hide, each cannot continue with the life they've led, being controlled by others who gain everything and return very little. Each has to make a decision whether to become part of the system which will benefit themselves but lose all sense of morality and ethics, to avenge their ills, or to curl up and die.
'A Touch of Sin' starts off well, Dahai's story is one which will probably interest you the most. But the film is too long, and suffers from a second half which doesn't quite match the tension and drama of the first half. Its a bleak and unforgiving film, such is the pessimism in Zhang- Ke's dehumanised China that there is simply nowhere to run. In one scene, one characters asks another if he ever feels like travelling abroad. "Why would I?" he replies. "Everywhere is broke. Foreigners come here now." Welcome to the new China.