Chinese with English subtitles.

The movie is not rated. It does contain some profanity.

This movie is filmed and set in Fengjie in Chongqing municipality. Fengjie is down river from Fuling and just upriver from the Three Gorges Dam. The flooding from the dam is a key piece of this movie.

Two people come to the area to find their spouses. One is Han Sanming, a miner from Shanxi province. Sixteen years ago, his wife left him taking their daughter with her. He has not seen either of them since. When he arrives, he discovers that the address for his wife’s home is now underwater. He finds her older brother who tells him that she works on a boat in Yichang. The brother suggests that he stay for a few months because she will return to the area in that time. Han finds work as a laborer, tearing down buildings that will soon be flooded. As the story unfolds, we learn that he purchased his wife.

In the other story, nurse Shen Hong comes to Fengjie to locate her husband who she has not seen nor heard from in two years. He was a soldier assigned to guard the dam but now is a hotshot business man in the area. She suspects him of an affair with his business partner. When they finally meet, she tells him that there is someone else in her life and that she wants a divorce.

The director Jia Zhang-ke uses understated storytelling to excellent effect. Even more importantly, the scenery and people are used to show the transitions occurring in this part of China. His scenery shots are sweeping, panning the lush landscape with its cities perched upon the hills. Even his shots of demolished buildings and closed factories are beautiful. He even adds some surrealist twists that contribute to the overall feel of the movie—one of lost traditions and ever-pervasive changes.

In addition, the background stories created an intense sadness. Many are forced to leave their homes either to relocate higher on the hillsides or to move east with a flood of other migrants.

I often found myself thinking, is this the life of my daughter’s birthparents…is this what they faced? Because the movie documents this sliver of the Yangtze’s and Chongqing’s history, this may be a movie that Fuling families will not only want to watch but also purchase for their libraries.