not as good as all the hype

Fantastic!

Blistering performances.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Director Zhou Sun's movie from 2002 was somewhat of a rather long ordeal to get through. And I say that with the best of heart, because I was really trying to get submerged into this movie with heart and spirit, but it just never really spoke out to me or captivated me."Zhou Yu's Train" (aka "Zhou Yu de huo che") felt like a three hour long movie despite it just running at an average 1 hour and 37 minutes. It was the prolonged storytelling and constantly dragged out scenes where you watch Li Gong either walking in slow motion or sitting around lost in thought that made the movie seem like it was taking forever to get nowhere.And getting nowhere is exactly what director Zhou Sun managed to do with this movie. It is the story of Zhou Yu (played by Li Gong) a ceramic artist who travels a long distance twice a week by train in order to see her poet boyfriend Chen Qing (played by Tony Ka Fai Leung). During her numerous trips back and forth Zhou Yu befriends Zhang Qiang (played by Honglei Sun) a veterinarian who is enamored with the young artist.It should be said that the acting in the movie and the three main acting talents really did perform quite well throughout the course of the movie. They were just limited by the directorial hand of Zhou Sun.Storywise, then "Zhou Yu's Train" doesn't really come up with anything overly new or impressive, nor does it move the Asian cinema by any means. Sure, if you are a fan of Li Gong then there is some enjoyment to be had here, but as fan of the broader Asian cinema then "Zhou Yu's Train" came off as too slow paced and not overly much happening."Zhou Yu's Train" pulls a mere four of ten stars from me as the train is departing the station. I wasn't particularly impressed with the movie, and it took the director forever to virtually get nowhere. However, it should be said that the ending of the movie was quite good, although it wasn't much of a surprise twist.

Zhou Yu's Train is a Chinese film starring Gong Li and Tony Leung Ka- Fai.The title refers to a poetic compilation published by the character in the movie played by Leung. The story starts at a book signing event and leads to the memories of the two lovers encounters. The story maintained the relationship by commuting on the train, hence the title of the movie.It was directed by Sun Zhou.Zhou Yu's Train is set in Chongyang and Sanming. A young painter named Zhou Yu falls headlong in love with a painfully shy poet, Chen Ching. Twice a week she takes the train to his town to be with him, even though he's bewildered by her near-obsessive passion. On the train, a wise- cracking veterinarian pursues Zhou Yu, but she resists his emotional directness. Zhou Yu's Train bounces back and forth, not only between these two romances but also in time, to confusing effect. But there's something compelling about Zhou Yu's need to love the version of her lover that she holds in her mind, and that sustains the movie through its muddled moments.Zhou Yu's Train could be best described as a convoluted love triangle.Also,the characters aren't presented in terms of their objectives.What's worse,the film is pieced together with many flashbacks in no particular chronological order which makes the story confusing to the viewers especially to those who do not understand Chinese or the Chinese culture.We're too busy trying to figure out who's who and what's what, when we should be ruminating on the multiple implications of an intimate story of love's labors lost.The only positive thing I could say about it is that the cinematography and the presence of the gorgeous Gong Li and nothing more.

If you like the feeling of being mystified and of watching others being mystified themselves, then this is the movie for you. You have only to peruse the previous comments and notice the contradictions in them about plot elements and even dramatis personae to see how confusing this movie is. Most interesting of all, what someone understands to have happened in the movie seems not to matter. Almost all the comments are positive. ("Abject adulation" might be a better phrase.) How much to blame Zhou Sun (writer, director) and how much to blame Cun Bei (novelist) must be left to readers of Chinese with time on their hands. All in all a travesty fit to be enjoyed by those who deserve nothing better!

In comparison to most other Chinese movies, the title of this movie has very significant symbolic meaning, symbolizing the point of no return. It also has an poetic meaning, which neatly related to the plot of the movie which include a poet. This is one of most obvious achievement of this movie, which also makes it a little different from the rest of Chinese movies.The social critic aspect of the movie is rather something ordinary, a theme that is common in most social critic films in contemporary China, and it is none other than the criticism of hedonism, materialism, and other common stuff you would find in Chinese movies about modern China.