NIGHT TRAIN World Cinema

Diao Yinan, the award-winning director of UNIFORM, once again uses his hometown Xi’ an as the backdrop for a meditation on Chinese provincial life. Diao’s spare images and non-psychological approach to storytelling form a portrait of the almost-monastic life of his characters.

Wu Hongyuan (Liu Dan) is a taciturn female bailiff for a court that prosecutes crimes of passion-mostly by women. Her life is unremarkable: even participating in an execution fails to disrupt her routine. (Diao borrows Bresson’s elliptical imagery to mark the occurrence of a significant event: white gloves tossed into a fire represent an execution.) Her weekly train rides to attend Good Luck Matchmaking dances, while mostly forgettable, bring Wu the occasional, undesired sexual advance, until she meets a mysterious man, Li Jun (Qi Dao), who is the widower of a woman she executed.

The pair’s inner conflicts and desire for each other become an allegory of modern China’s struggles to adapt to disorienting societal changes. With NIGHT TRAIN, Diao joins the pantheon of contemporary Asian masters including Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jio Zhangke.