Cry Woman

The young Chinese woman Guixiang and her husband Changgeng scrape together a meagre living on the streets of Beijing by selling illegal DVDs. During a heated game of mahjong, Changgeng blinds his opponent and ends up in jail. The authorities send Guixiang back to her home region of Guizhou. When her problems get too much for her, the desperate Guixiang bursts into tears. Her beautiful, melodious crying turns out to be her salvation. An old friend persuades her to rent herself out as a professional mourner at funerals. Guixiang soon develops into the most sought after mourner in the whole area. Liu Bingjian had the idea for the colourful tragi comedy Cry Woman, when in 1999 he visited a funeral as a reporter and came into contact with professional mourners. Liu, who never works with a complete script while shooting, prefers to have non professional actors for his films to stay as close as possible to reality. In Cry Woman, he also took little notice of the Chinese censors, who rejected this intelligent film on the grounds that it paints `a negative picture of life on the Chinese countryside’ and `is not conducive for the quality of socialism’.