Platform

Jia Zhang-Ke's second feature is undoubtedly his most autobiographical. It is set in the 1980s, at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, of which he was one of the children. It depicts the gradual disintegration of an amateur theatre company in Fenyang - whose model is derived from his own family history - as it begins to abandon propaganda shows, become privatised, and attempts to renew itself by embracing new cultural trends imbued with pop tunes from elsewhere. This is the backdrop for the story, which revolves around the relationship between two couples, notably that formed by Cui Mingliang (Wang Hongwei) and Yin Ruijuan, played by Zhao Tao, who would become Jia Zhang-Ke's muse in his subsequent work. Divided into 35 mm sequence shots, the film powerfully reveals the tension felt by a generation daring to dream of an individual destiny, but whose erratic affirmation clashes with the collective burdens inherited from the past. A film imbued with the angst of thwarted expectations, Platform crystallises the experience of the inexorable passage of time.
Emmanuel Chicon