Known as "China\'s first \'green\' feature", A Disappearing Village was almost a disappearing film. Based on a 2007 online short story, and shot in Yunnan in early 2008 with a cast of known actors, it finally surfaced at Beijing\'s Broadway Cinematheque in March 2011 and now gets an official release this month. The first fully-fledged feature by scriptwriter Lin Lisheng, is a beautifully performed, low-key rural comedy that rises way above its worthy eco-credentials-Yunnan villagers being moved to protect the environment-to tell a part-funny, part-touching story of family strife and paternal stubbornness.
There\'s no shortage of Mainland movies about the vanishing ways of rural life and villagers being moved into new housing. But Lin-a teacher at Beijing Film Academy\'s Department of Film Studies who\'s been writing TV drama scripts for over a decade, including this year\'s hit period spy drama Borrow Gun-brings a fresh spin to the material with a fine cast and exquisite production values that place the film somewhere between an art movie and a semi-commercial black comedy. Since the film editing is the experienced Zhou Xinxia, it\'s cutting is exquisite without boring the viewer. Lin lets the characters move around within cameraman Qu Li\'nan\'s widescreen compositions, and the gentle score by Shen Yiling sketches mood without becoming exotic.
The film\'s humour and characterisation are entirely situational: the continuing hunt for a chicken thief who is troubling the tiny community, the establishment of an open-air "morality court" to try a "sexual harrasser", and so on. As the father who refuses to move from his traditional family home, and won\'t even talk to his younger son who\'s finally returned home after a violent argument, veteran Wang Xueqi anchors the film with a dour humour that\'s finally quite touching. He\'s well matched by Zhu Yuchen as the son in question, and by actress Tang Yifei, almost unrecognisable as a feisty young shepherdess who gets her own back on Zhu\'s character for suddenly deserting her three years ago.
By Derek Elley