One clever element of this film is the way in which various people who are significant in Li Cunxin's life, tell him stories with a message. The frog trapped at the bottom of a well is one. He hears from a toad at the top of the well that the big wide world is worth seeing.
The whole film is a story with a message - and the message is one that uplifts without in any sense being cloying. Beresford, the director, even manages at several stages to invoke the idiom of Chinese revolutionary film and theatre. The scenes actually shot in China are some of the most authentic in the film, which is not uniformly good in this regard. Somehow, the slightly stagy acting of some of the Huston Ballet Company characters, ceases to matter because the lead parts are well carried and the storyline is strong.
Li Cunxin defected to America partly for his art and partly for love. The wonders of the materiality of Huston are perhaps a poor substitute for losing your country; yet that country was deeply scarred by the Mao's cultural revolution. To watch the part early on where the benefits brought by Chairman Mao to the Chinese people, are laid out by Party Functionaries, has a dark poignancy, given that today we know he was directly responsible for the death of many, many millions.
The dance sequences are done very well and the film pleases at that level as well as a tale with more twists and turns than you might imagine.
A film of some subtlety and considerable beauty; recommended.
