In today’s China, the middle classes provide a supreme example of materialism, emptiness and yearning. The nouveau riche seem seem united only in their unstoppable race f or more material wealth. Fang Lei, the protagonist in this feature debut by Chinese documentary maker Yang Lina, only has to care for her daughter. Safely cocooned in a loveless, sexless but also peaceful marriage, she spends much of her time shopping with girlfriends. Her anxieties – about dying, about her husband being unfaithful – only emerge in her dreams. One night, a mysterious young lover appears and makes passionate love to her. Time and again, he allows her to enjoy unprecedented pleasure and soon Fang Lei is no longer able to separate reality from dream and regards the man of her dreams as her real husband. She is happy, carefree and beautiful. Until a jealous rival looms up in her dreams. Yang Lina links various genres together in a surprising and successful way. Her film is an Asian ghost story in which documentary scenes – closely related to social satire – show how incongruous today’s reality can look in China. But Longing for the Rain can also be regarded as an original variation on a Freudian case, in which a worrying melange of social pressure, emptiness and female lust and eroticism is analysed and exposed.
