The most notable thing about this graceful, beautifully shot directing debut by actress Jiang Wenli is not its production design; nor its composition and pacing, which combine to make the movie gorgeous to look at without pushing the audience\'s patience for still-life studies too far; nor even the performances, with veteran Zhu Xu effortlessly playing the stern but kindly grandpa and the title character, Xiaolan, seamlessly played through her pre-teens and teens by Yao Jun and Zhu Yinuo. The most notable thing about Jiang\'s writing-directing debut is the way in which the political background is sensed and felt rather than hammered home, and how the main character gradually absorbs its effects rather than mainlines on them.
On the surface, the film has a familiar look and adopts a largely traditional, classical approach to its storytelling, supported by Evgueni Galperine\'s delicate scoring. But from a larger perspective, Jiang\'s semi-autobiographical script can be seen as one of several recent examples - the latest being Li Fangfang\'s Heaven Eternal, Earth Everlasting, which deals with the \'80s generation - that have helped to untie the Gordian Knot that for so long bound growing-up/large family dramas to political changes in China\'s 20th-century history. Jiang\'s point is that, under the headline changes, daily life still went on as usual.
Also, her heroine is hardly a traditional one: sustained by her grandfather\'s lies that her mum and dad really are "turning the desert into fertile land", she first becomes obsessed with becoming a gymnast - despite being blacked at school for having "rightist" parents - but later just lets it drop when it\'s obvious she\'ll never be a champion. Lan is not a parable about one person succeeding; it\'s more about time passing, and people with it.
For a film debut by an actress, Lan is pretty restrained in its performances. Jiang isn\'t afraid to let her emotions go when the situation requires it - witness the extraordinary, but totally exhilarating, moment when Xiaolan "flies" above all her problems - and the way in which the natural and industrial worlds are caught both on the soundtrack and in the beautiful cinematography by Jong Lin.
By Derek ELLEY