good back-story, and good acting

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Blistering performances.

This short by Zhang Ke is, in a way, a distillation of his usual concerns and aesthetic sensibilities. It has no dialogue, no acting, no story. It starts with documentations of working class transportation (trains, buses), then moves on to show people waiting in a train station, the camera lovingly probes some crippled party politician, sitting and smiling in his wheelchair complete with Mao Ze Dong pictures and red and golden banners. Then we move on to a dance hall (a usual meeting place for Zhang Ke), where a dance lesson is in session. All in all, quite moving, strangely compelling. Another piece in the director's ongoing documentation of the modern-China puzzle.