If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Being an international student studying in U.S. I would probably have a very different point of view of this movie, that being said, I hope that I can give some insight of this movie with my past life of living 24 years in Beijing and additional 3 years of life living in U.S. First, let me make one thing clear, if anyone thinks this is a cheap movie with stupid plot such as a girl being raped and she actually enjoyed the process, please go back to watch the movie again, or just switch to some Hollywood movie which will give you a fantasy that ends up with happy after forever. This is a movie about the real life of people in Beijing, it is well founded, carefully thought about, and shot in a very skillful camera angles. Now I am going to give evidence and explanations why I think so.The background scene: if you watched it closely, you probably have found that most of the scenes are so gray, suppressing, with typical cold colors, the movie is also shot in winter. That is the realistic view of winter Beijing, having the cold wind cutting into your bones. It is not an easy weather to live in, as someone raised in this kind of weather, you learn to endure it, suffer from it, and adapt to it. This kind of weather of course makes the life even harder for poor immigrant workers. This detail is just so true and so carefully expressed over the whole film. This rendering effect sets the baseline of the whole film, which is a sad, unfortunate, but realistic movie. Characters and culture. I think one of the main things that the director/script writer wants to express here is, the mispositioned female status in the Chinese culture. I saw no one here actually commenting on this. This idea is hidden deep, but it is pretty obvious if you understands the life of Chinese people and have been in touch with some western culture. An kung and Lin Dong, one poor one rich, both regard the women as some kind of possessions in their lives. An kung asked for money when he found out that his wife has been raped. If you are a traditional Chinese, you may even find this reasonable, but if you look at this from a different view, he is regarding his wife as his belongings, he's asking for money as a compensation because, his belonging is damaged, and he believes that money can compensate all his sufferings (well, if you regard women as a commercial product, you can buy a different one with more money, right?). Lin Dong, regards his wife and ping guo as the tool for having offspring. This is revealed so nicely if you think about all the details, he wants a boy not a girl, prayed to God for it(probably to carry on his business since he's rich.) His own wife can not give birth, so he goes out all the time to hookers and he acts as if he has the right to do so. When ping guo was pregnant he just directly came to his wife and acted like: look, you can't do it, so it is reasonable for me to find someone else to do it. Ping guo and Wang mei, being the women in such a culture, regarded their inferior position as natural, accepted them and almost never disobeyed or tried to fight. Some details: Wang Mei said she could never object her husband's decision for 16 years. (But being a well educated rich woman, she eventually revenged by having sex with An kun. It is funny and interesting if you paid attention to what she said during the sex.) Ping guo, as a weak, uneducated woman, having no power in the society, no freedom, being so desperate to have someone to rely on and someone to love her, became the center of the whole tragedy. Raped, deserted by her husband, and raped by her husband, then slapped by the woman richer. She actually found a little love from Lin Dong, although she knows that it is purely on the sex basis, but even that is better than having nothing. And she even tried to accept such a disgusting relationship. The ending seems random, but actually giving all the information you need to understand what the movie wants to reveal, two women sitting together, both realizing that they are the victims of the culture, holding hands in tears. While both men, deserted by their women, pushing cars together on the high way.(Implying that the materialistic things, namely cars and money that they pursued after will eventually fail them. They are so stupid to lose love over trivial things as money, or power.) Xiao Mei is the character not so important, but also a crucial part of the whole story, being a hooker, she's a live description of how woman are forced by life itself to drop into the traps of death. It also gives a powerful impression on how limited the options are from which the poor Chinese people have to choose from, and how hard life is there. There are a lot more details, but I don't have space and time to explore them, it is a movie worth of watching, I have already gone through it for the 3rd time, and still find new things. I hope everyone reading this can understand a little more about the Chinese society and culture.

Peng Guo is the story of a young provincial Chinese woman in Beijing, Liu Pengguo, caught between the sexual and financial desires and demands of her husband, An Kun, and her boss, Lin Dong.It is said that all cultures pass through certain distinctive stages before reaching decadence and decline. I would like to think that one of these stages, one that comes somewhere towards the end of industrialisation, relates to the need to make rather miserable social realist films with wobbly camera work, jump cuts, shallow focus, piano scores in minor keys, and long takes of (non-professional) actors "acting", which win Golden Somethings at European film festivals. China, it appears, is no exception.OK, I'll admit to being cynical. It is clearly a well-funded, well-produced, and well-observed drama. And I suppose that social realist films don't generally have happy endings, so I shouldn't be smug about that either. Yet, if I had to distil my criticism down to one thing it would be the director's wilful conformity to the "genre". I find myself yearning for Zhang Yimou's films of the late eighties and early nineties, when Chinese film had a real sense of identity. Now it seems to be a mish-mash of various Western influences and little substance, a bit like Mando-pop (just with less smiling). This "conformity" takes on an ironic edge, not just because it was made under a communist government, but because the government banned it. In addition, the producers have been banned from making another film in China for two years, which strikes me as being just enough time to promote this film in Europe, write another one and get some European funding for it! OK, OK, still being cynical. It is a good film. The script is engaging and occasionally quite surprising (especially as we all know it's going to end in tears). The acting is good all round, especially thanks to two Asian cinema stalwarts Tony Leung Ka Fai and Elaine Jin (think Robert De Niro and... um... Juliette Binoche?) playing the boss and his wife, Wang Mei. Elaine Jin steals the show really, creating a character who is both impetuous and enigmatic at the same time. There are some nice insights into Beijing life, which are welcome post-Olympics razzmatazz. The direction is a bit contrived as I have noted, but when director Yu Li finally shakes off film school and gets the camera on a tripod it makes for a nice last few scenes.That said, the film struggles to find its focus. While it's clearly a film about Fan Bingbing's physically and emotionally abused heroine, the POV shifts to that of her husband for large swathes of the narrative and we are left feeling rather sympathetic for him despite his (rather unsubtle) faults. The second act lightens in tone so much that it seems to be heading towards black comedy. The one and only sub-plot involves a prostitute who seems to be there to remind us that the four central characters are not the only ones having a crappy time – and she drops out of the story just as conveniently.And then there's the controversy. Yes, it's got sex in it and no, Beijing wasn't happy with that. Would the film be any different without the sex scenes? Not really - decide for yourself. Two swallows don't make a summer, just as two arses don't make a controversial film necessarily polemical. Mind you, 2007 was quite a year for Hong Kong film royalty showing their posteriors - the other Tony Leung (Chiu Wai) bared his for 'Lust, Caution'... But I digress.If you have watched a lot of these films from emerging economies, you will recognise the format all too well and, given the necessarily downbeat subject matter, the only pleasure might be guessing exactly how everyone is going to plunge into the misery for which they were all destined. Oh well. As films of this genre go it's not bad, so give it a go and make your own mind up.

China's weird. Didn't we just learn from the Olympic Committee that there's billions of people living there? I think we did. Why then is this one of only a few films I can think of, off the top of my head, coming from there that has any semblance of lived-life-now? Lived life now under peculiar circumstances, sure, because it is a movie after all, but still. Everything else seems to be costumed drama kung fu palace historical Mao-sanctioned fantasy crap. I'm talking mainland China here. Taiwan and Hong Kong don't count. Ang Lee doesn't count. All the Chinese filmmakers making films in other parts of the world, and getting them financed and released in other parts of the world, don't count—and there's the rub.Lost in Beijing is banned in China and its filmmakers are banned for two years from making films in China. What kind of nonsensical time-out is that? I mean no disrespect to the Chinese, I just want more of them to fall through the cracks and make films like Lost in Beijing—which is nothing like Farewell My Hero's Kingdom of Flying Yellow Flowers.Fan Bingbing, known in the west as Bingbing Fan, stars in this film as Liu Ping Guo (Ping Guo, the Chinese title, translates literally as "Apple"), a foot massage girl who is raped by her boss (played out-of-this-worldly great by Tony Leung Ka Fai who's been in enough movies that every Chinese citizen could pick a film of his to see without any two people seeing the same film—western audiences may know him as the guy who has sex with Marguerite Duras in The Lover), and the rape is witnessed by her husband, a window washer who just happens to be hanging from a scaffolding washing the windows of the room at the massage parlor where the rape takes place. Foot massage is big business in China so I guess that's why this massage parlor is some kind of skyscraper that needs these scaffolded window washers, but I digress. The husband sees this as an opportunity to milk a little money from the well to do parlor owner. Lost in Beijing turns a critical eye toward the new moneyed urban class set against the rural, immigrant-in-their-own-country, if you will, working class.Bingbing's husband confronts Tony's wife with the rape news and demands money for his pain and suffering, yes, you read that right, his pain and suffering. Tony's wife laughs at him and suggests a better revenge would be for him to have sex with her, and then in a moment of barely noticed brilliance while she's riding him cowgirl puts sunglasses on him so she can't see him looking at her.It turns out Bingbing is pregnant and things get a little more complicated. If you complain when a film uses overly convenient plot devices to move forward you probably won't like this film as much as I do. I'm more concerned with the caliber of the characters. All four of the main performances in Lost in Beijing are magnificent. (Tony's relationship with, and handling of, his over sized wallet/day-planner is hilarious, as is his response of randomly checking the top of his head for bald spots when he's busted for trying to use a mirror to peek at Bingbing in the shower.) The direction is good and the camera-work creative, sometimes a little too creative to the point where I got dizzy a couple times so I'm deducting a point for that. Beijing is the backdrop here, captured in all its beautiful gray and desolate self.

This is the first movie I've seen come out of Mainland China of respectable quality. I'll admit I haven't seen many, but from what I have seen, this is certainly above and beyond.The story is about a poor migrant couple and a wealthy couple living in Beijing. Their lives become intertwined through a set of unfortunate and somewhat disturbing circumstances.I'm not perfectly fluent in Mandarin, but the acting was good from all four main characters. The less experienced Bingbing Fang was especially good as Ping Guo, the lead character. The scenery is set amid the toxic haze of a sprawling Beijing with lots of greys and muted colours.The best thing about the movie for me was the amazing contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor. Even though I'm surrounded by it daily, this movie gives a little bit more intimacy than what I'm normally exposed to. Other common themes were greed and face.Ultimately, the production values of the movie were very good, from the cinematography to the acting, but the conclusion doesn't really leave you with a good taste in your mouth. I think this is good though, because it sticks closer to what reality might be like, instead of having clearly defined heroes and antagonists with a full circle ending.