Here are short reviews of new movies opening Friday.
Daring and beautifully made, Zhang Yang’s “Quitting” plays like a Chinese “Rebel Without a Cause.” It’s a structurally unorthodox work that dramatizes the moody, romantic abandon of Chinese film star Jia Hongsheng.
The alienated, sensual Jia made his reputation as the “thug idol,” playing in several B-movies and experimental features by China’s Sixth Generation directors. Emotionally unequipped to handle the demands of his burgeoning celebrity, Jia retreated into heavy heroin use and nihilistic breakdown. In “Quitting,” set largely during 1995, Zhang revisits this tense period, casting the actor as himself playing opposite his own sister, parents, friends and hospital administrators.
The effect is a stylized “recreation,” building experience, emotion and feeling into doom-laden dramatic intensity. Zhang also posits Jia’s turbulent life and work as evidence of a deeper social malaise among China’s young and gifted. As with the planetary sequence from “Rebel,” Zhang draws on an extraordinary image–a cloverleaf overpass where Jia and his father work out their sharp conflict–to convey a sense of painful recognition passed from father to son. The defining image, of Jia perched uneasily atop his bicycle, his arms flailing, is transcendent.
“Quitting” (star)(star)(star) 1/2 opens at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Rated R (drug content). Mandarin with English subtitles. Running time: 1:58.
