Melodrama with wheels

>> Beijing Bicycle tries to update The Bicycle Thief

by MARK SLUTSKY

Maybe it’s unfair to judge a movie against a cinematic classic, but Beijing Bicycle fairly begs the comparison. Clearly inspired by Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, Beijing Bicycle is pretty much a modern riff on de Sica’s neo-realist landmark. While The Bicycle Thief’s protagonist was a poor Roman family man in battered post-war Italy, director Wang Xiaoshuai’s contemporary update places its hapless hero, an impoverished boy from the provinces, in modern-day Beijing.

Country mouse Guei (Cui Lin) arrives penniless in the big city and lucks out, landing a job with a bike-courier firm. He’s given a bike of his own, which he’ll own after about a month working it off. Just as he’s a day away from full ownership, though, the bike is stolen, leaving Cui desolate. Without his one possession he’s got no means of making a living, and his only, seemingly hopeless, option is to try and find it again in a huge city full of bicyclists.

Here, Beijing Bicycle begins to diverge from its inspiration. Somewhat improbably, Cui locates the bike, now in the possession a slightly more affluent (though by no means wealthy) and spoiled kid (Li Bin), who digs his new status as a bike owner. Cui manages to wrest it back, and Li hunts it down again with a posse of his school chums; possession goes back and forth as the two boys are too stubborn to let it go. The sporty little vehicle is clearly what each measures his self-worth by: Li socially, Cui economically.

Wang’s Beijing is crowded and colourful, the earthy colours of the brick buildings contrasting sharply with the bright green foliage. He situates the movie largely in the city’s mazelike back alleys, which are an interesting little world of their own. The cinematography has a very composed, formal look to it, and it’s a bit of a problem; though beautiful, Beijing Bicycle is a little too slick, visually impressive but somehow uninspired. The movie’s style kind of betrays the neo-neo-realism Wang is going for—it’s so tasteful and deliberate that it lacks the immediate, rough quality of the films of de Sica and his ilk.

Not that Beijing Bicycle should necessarily have to compete against The Bicycle Thief, but you just can’t watch it without being reminded again and again of its predecessor. Take the main characters, for example—The Bicycle Thief’s protagonist had a family and a child to feed; you can’t help feeling that Cui, young and vital, might just find another job. His desperate desire to find the bicycle thus becomes less a matter of urgent need than a grim obsession. It doesn’t really play out in a satisfying way.

While offering a superficially interesting portrait of the city, Beijing Bicycle never really goes far enough in its exploration of the characters or the city. You kind of wish Wang would reach a little deeper into the complex situations he’s set up, that he’d be a little less concerned with the movie’s look and more with the real meat of the story. :

Beijing Bicycle opens Friday, Jan. 11