Unknown Pleasures (film)
| Unknown Pleasures | |
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| Directed by | Jia Zhangke |
| Produced by |
Shozo Ichiyama Li Kit Ming Masayuki Mori |
| Written by | Jia Zhangke |
| Starring |
Zhao Weiwei Wu Qiong Zhao Tao |
| Cinematography | Nelson Yu Lik-wai |
| Edited by | Chow Keung |
| Distributed by |
United States: New Yorker Films United Kingdom: Artificial Eye |
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Release date
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Running time
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113 minutes |
| Country | China |
| Language |
Jin Chinese Mandarin Chinese |
Unknown Pleasures (Chinese: 任逍遥; pinyin: Rèn xiāo yáo; literally: "Free from all constraints") is a 2002 Chinese film directed by Jia Zhangke, starring Wu Qiong, Zhao Weiwei and Zhao Tao as three disaffected youths living in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.
The film was a co-production of four countries: Japan's Office Kitano and T-Mark, China's Hu Tong Communications, France's Lumen Films, and South Korea's E-Pictures. It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival but would eventually lose to director Roman Polanski's Holocaust film, The Pianist.
Unknown Pleasures is Jia's third feature film after 1997's Xiao Wu and 2000s Platform, and it is sometimes considered the final film of an informal trilogy on a modern China in transition. The film also marked Jia's last production outside of the Chinese studio system. With 2004's The World, Jia would work with the approval of the state film bureaucrats (SARFT).
Unknown Pleasures follows three disaffected, aimless young people in the industrial city of Datong in China's Shanxi province throughout 2001. Nineteen-year-old Bin Bin (Zhao Weiwei) lives with his mother, an adherent of the Falun Gong, in a small apartment near Datong's textile mill. Bin Bin's best friend, the reckless Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong), lives in an even smaller apartment with his father, and spends his time riding his motorbike around the city. The two friends eventually meet Qiao Qiao, a young singer and dancer working for the Mongolian King Liquor company as a spokesmodel. Xiao Ji immediately becomes enamored with Qiao Qiao, which gets him in trouble with Qiao Qiao's boyfriend, the loan shark and local thug, Qiao San (Li Zhubin).
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