Stolen Life

Sometimes you see a film and wonder if that is the right film because you have such different opinion than someone else. Li Xiaohong’s “Stolen Life 生死劫” received the Best Narrative Feature Award in the Tribeca Film Festival back in April. I saw it today and for the life of me I have no idea how it has won any price at all. It is not a particularly bad film. It competently tells a far from unusual story pretty straightforwardly without offering anything new. The actors performed reasonably well but they have done better works; Zhou Xun 周迅, for example, was far better in “Suzhou River 蘇州河” and “Baober in Love 戀愛中的寶貝” playing similar characters. The New York press has already made a mistake by called it a banned film while it was so new at the time that it had not applied for the approval for theatre release. I am afraid the Tribeca Festival made a mistake in calling best of anything. It is at best a very average narrative.