Jingshen works as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. AtÜfirst he experiences the world as complete chaos, but slowly he gets used to the behaviour of the patients and he takes part in their recreational activities. One day young Jiyun is brought in. There is a severe shortage of space, so her bed is put in the cellar and Jingshen is told to keep an eye on her. He becomes intrigued by her and her dreams, tries to find out what precisely is wrong with her and above all what secrets are hidden by that recurring dream of the red beads. Jiyun reacts violently to him and even wounds him, but Jingshen becomes dragged more and more into her world and their relati¡onship becomes increasingly heated.Director He Yi used the closed character of an institution and man’s need to adapt to it as a metaphor for the world in general and China in particular. ‘The question is how to adapt yourself to and survive the changes’.Red Beads was shot in twelve days in Peking in the winter of 1992. The money was scraped together and virtually everyone worked for nothing, even protagonist Shi Ke, one of China’s most popular stars. Tony Rayns wrote in Sight and Sound: ‘The film is finely balanced between nightmare and black comedy, and makes grimly humorous play with long takes and manic pat¡terns of repetition while pushing slowly towards its longed-for sexual encounter.
