Even with the film industry stymied by lack of investment, mismanagament and censorship, Chinese cinema is still quite capable of throwing the odd curveball. New driector Wang Guangli sees his lack of film-schooling as an asset, allowing him to approach his wittily titled debut feature with a head free of preconceptions and conventions. Maiden Work is certainly a highly unorthodox movie, and it provides some startling insights into whta makes young artists tick in Beijing today. Artists that is, who mentally blur clichés from the old propaganda movies with lesbian fantasies, or find themselves watching TV news about military exercises in the Taiwan strait one minute and disco-dancing to maoist anthems for the Cultural Revolution the next. Amongst other things, this film offers a reliable, up-to-the-minute guide he Beijngs youth culture in 1998. The first half presents the tangled relationsship between painter Jinian (real life artist Ye You), the student-journalist Xuc who comes to interview him, and Xucs lesbian lover Yu, whose portrait Jinian once painted. But it’s srtongly implied tat all of the emotional cross-currents exist only in Jinians head as he undergoes treatment for in injury in a bar-fight. The second half shows Jinians struggle to make a film based on these characters and relationships. On the face of it, this will be the film we have just seen, but, as all film makers know, these things rarely work out as foreseen… Tony Rayns
