The Road

Running time: 114 mins

Starting in the 1960's and spanning the next several decades, The Road is a glowing film that reveals a great deal about recent Chinese history through the story of three people and the traditions that bind them.

In the backcountry of the Yunnan province lives the beautiful Li, a bright-eyed young ticket-taker on a rural bus. She grows from being a young woman caught up in a passionate but politically forbidden love affair, through marriage, duty and regrets to old age and acceptance. The other points of the triangle are Cui, an older bus driver who silently loves her, and Lui, who Li loves, is a doctor sent to a country labor camp during the Cultural Revolution. It is the interplay of relationships between these three, along with exquisite cinematography, that both propel this story and give it its resonance.

Director Zhang Jiarui follows up his beautiful When Ruoma Was Seventeen (Cinequest, 2004) with a warm portrait of three people, and the growing pains of a society. This is a rich and engrossing film filled with a wonderful sense of humanity, emotion and a gentle irony.


Charlie Cockey


This film has been presented by Jaman

MAVERICK COMPETITION