Amid crumbling buildings, crushing poverty and social decay, filmmaker Andrew Cheng captures a city fallen victim to moral and economic decline, through a collection of vignettes involving male prostitutes, aging hookers and other sex-trade workers. (Source: Mubi) Edit Translation
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Pioneering Chinese queer cinema in not having a fixed protagonist
The long-haired rent boy from Shanghai, the middle-aged lady who settled in the city upon arrival and today works hard to earn money, the young man who broke up with his ex who never returned to his hometown and now works as a pimp middle-aged, a bald and perverted old prostitute, a laid-off worker who once acted as a guest star and now runs a sexually transmitted disease clinic, the gay husband of a laid-off worker and their modest son, the introverted and taciturn son of a worker farewell who kept company with a puppy found on the road, the murderous gangster disguised as a member of the joint defense team, the young woman from Yunnan who asked for directions to the Bund, the Zhabei girl who works as a prostitute, the taxi passenger, the beautiful girl from out of town who took her younger brother and her boyfriend to a small town south of the Yangtze River...Before 'Babel' and 'Crash', the American films directed, the first by Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2006 and the second in 2004 by Paul Haggis, achieved international success due to their main characteristic of not having a fixed protagonist, and being benefited by the presence of Brad Pitt in one case and the Hollywood studio system in the other, 'Welcome to Destination Shanghai', the docudrama written and directed in 2003 by Chinese filmmaker Cheng Yusu also does not have a single protagonist.
Premiered at the 32nd Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands, then screened at the 27th Hong Kong International Film Festival, the film, starring Yang Zhiying, Cui Zi'en, Xiong Dailin, Yi Jin and other actors and Chinese actresses, cross stories, intermingle lives of queer characters in their daily lives on the streets of the important Chinese city.
Winner of the FIPRESCI Award from the International Association of Film Critics and the Fipzig National Film Critics Award, through a collection of vignettes involving male prostitutes, elderly prostitutes and other sex trade workers, Shi Yue's precise photography combines the Shanghai on the Bund with the Shanghai on the Suzhou River, the ever-changing political Shanghai with the ever-changing economic Shanghai, the Shanghai with Chinese characteristics and the Shanghai in the process of globalization, the people common Shanghai and the people of prosperous Shanghai to present realistic Shanghai and allegorical Shanghai in a somewhat linear, full and white manner, forming a group of postmodern Shanghai images with various expressions and charms.
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