'Lost in Beijing'

Rating:

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

January 25, 2008

The rippling effects of corporate capitalism through the ocean of contemporary China's humanity have made the nation even more of a gold mine, not just for speculators, but storytellers. In "Lost in Beijing," director Yu Li constructs a four-sided chime that sounds loudly about money, sex, Chinese tradition and the mutating impact of modernism on all of them.

Liu Ping Guo (Bingbing Fan) is a foot masseuse in a parlor run by the entrepreneurial (read cruel and intolerant) Lin Don (Tony Leung Ka Fai), who rapes Liu one night after a company party. The act is witnessed from outside, a bit coincidentally, by Liu's window-washer husband, An Jun (Dawei Tong), who decides to blackmail Lin Don. But then they all find that Liu Ping Guo is pregnant, Lin Don wants a baby - his wife (the great Elaine Jin) is barren - and so a deal is struck by which money, child and some kind of honor will be shared and/or damaged among the miserable quartet.

It's a funny film, a parable of sorts, and a character-driven take on what's ticking in China.

LOST IN BEIJING (unrated). Written by Fang Li, Yu Li. Directed by Yu Li. 1:52 (adult content, sex, nudity, language). In Mandarin with English subtitles. At the Cinema Village, Manhattan.