May and August are the two principal characters of this war film, two young girls whose parents are killed during the Japanese invasion on Nanjing. After some desperate moments, they are then taken in by their Uncle's family, before moving on to the company of a youthful artist and a group of nuns. It's a pleasant enough film, which would have benefited from a bigger budget and a more involving script; the early scenes in Nanjing showing the marauding Japanese, for instance, are adequately mounted but really needed more of a show. It's painfully obvious that many of the actions scenes are being shot around the same, limited sets, and this tends to reduce the excitement. Throughout the film the Japanese are shown as worldless brutes, without any real identity - partly to avoid sympathy. It's also a directorial strategy presumably employed as Japanese actors were unavailable to play the military roles, and Chinese stand-ins had to be disguised from the audience. Why the soldiers are there, their aims and intent, is left unexplained to viewers - although one imagines such issues are well known to local audiences, but which leaves a lack of political perspective to everyone else. This would be fine if the human drama was strong enough to carry us along but, at its weakest, this historical vacuum is distracting. Some Chinese films bend over backwards to be hostile to the invaders - think of those old Jimmy Wang Yu movies - here the national revulsion is strangely muted.
The two girl actresses who play May and August, for whom this is a first screen appearance, do a well enough job (the younger, May Xu in particular does fine work in producing tears on cue) but the undernourished dialogue between then means that their relationship is hardly developed. The natural reliance between sisters on the road and in distress, which one might reasonably expect to provide the most dramatic interest, is largely absent. One problem is that they are strangely fortunate orphans in the storm, quickly discovered by their uncle in a church orphanage after what seems a very short time wondering, or stumbling easily into generous nuns. The biggest name in the cast (and the only one to be highlighted in the extras on the well produced DVD) is Celia Yip, here playing the mother, She's probably best known to Western audiences for her appearance in the very different Chungon Satluk Linggei / Organised Crime and Triad Bureau (1996).
As a war film set amidst the scene of some notorious historical atrocities, it would be strange if May and August did not contain some moments of violence. Those here are not without a power to shock, notably the fate of the girl's mother, or the recovery of the father's severed hand by the family dog (a moment which recalls a similar one in Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961)). But these are isolated scenes, which come and go and, for this viewer at least, left no overall sense of the horror and distress surrounding the girls. By far the most effective moment in the film is the final scene, when the party of orphans cry out for their lost parents by the river. Over-prolonged perhaps, and with (understandably) nationalistic overtones as they appeal to 'mother', this is a striking group manifestation of grief. Interestingly the producers thought this the best moment too, as it is what principally makes up the trailer!
In short, this is a well photographed film which makes for pleasant enough viewing if the subject matter interests one - although for more dramatic treatment of this period I would suggest revisiting Empire of the Sun...
