BEIJING BICYCLE  *1/2

Reviewed 10/30/01

BEIJING BICYCLE is the type of movie that mistakens misery for truth and substitutes character development with unlikely plot turns that exist only as dictates by the godlike author from on high.  The working-poor Guei (Cui Lin) comes to Beijing from rural China and nabs a job for a delivery company in which he earns the bicycle he uses over a month’s time.  Naturally, the day before the bike becomes his, it gets stolen.  Guei’s boss fires him for failing to make his delivery, but admiring his persistence, he says he will take Guei back if he finds his bike.  With remarkable luck, Guei finds middle class Jian (Li Bin) in possession of the bike.  Jian purchased it not knowing it was stolen, but nevertheless refuses to give it back, and the two begin thieving it from each other.  One needs the bike to survive while the other wants it for social status and fun.  Director and co-writer Wang Xiaoshuai and actor Cui Lin give Guei no personality, and the only way you can tell he is still alive is that he moves.  Jian, on the other hand, is completely self-centered.  That the audience is left with a zero and a cad for the main characters is made all the more apparent because three complex performances surround them.   Zhao Yiwel as Jian’s father, Xie Jian as Guei’s manager, and the beautiful Zhou Xun as Jian’s girlfriend all actually look human with multiple emotions running through them simultaneously.  Wang extends scenes beyond the breaking point without having the eye for compositional detail that a Tsai Ming-liang has to sustain interest.  Wang also engages in empty stylization by having characters stay inexplicably silent in scenes.  This might be because a lot of the plot complications would be quickly resolved if the characters simply sat down and talked to one another.  The movie does not deliver the goods until a big confrontation scene between Jian and his father late in the film, and by then, it is too late.  Ultimately, BEIJING BICYCLE is yet another wallow in miserablism, and has only an ounce of the humanity in that other much greater film Wang aspires to, Vittorio De Sica’s BICYCLE THIEVES.