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Derek ELLEY is Chief Film Critic of "Film Bussiness Asia."
A film of beguiling simplicity that\'s all the more affecting for its lack of melodrama, TELL ME A BEAUTIFUL WORLD has a discreet poetry that sets its apart from the sizable number of Mainland movies dealing with physical impairment. Centred on the relationship between a blind man and his 11-year-old daughter who becomes his "eyes on the world", the film has no conventional narrative, instead presenting the audience with a series of scenes from the life of the two main characters and their family, in no particular chronological order. Initially a little confusing, but soon making sense as the larger picture emerges, it\'s a story with a positive message of triumph over adversity that\'s not at all hectoring or cliched.
Writer-director Liu Yijun, 44, has worked in both TV drama and films, generally focused on young people - from the political potboiler about young model hero Lei Feng, YOUTHFUL DAYS (2013), to more personal films like ONE MILLION YUAN (2004), GOING HOME (2010) and TIMES WITHOUT A DREAM (2007). BEAUTIFUL WORLD expresses most clearly his background as a poet, following middle-aged Luo Guangming as he leaves behind his mother and elder brother and goes down to the city with his daughter Luo Shuoshuoto put her through school and give her the chances in life he never had. As he works as a blind shoeshine on the streets, Shuoshuo describes the world around him and also does some growing-up of her own, gaining in self-confidence after being born with a hare-lip that scarred her youth.
On paper the film sounds sentimental, but Liu never lets it become so, cross-cutting back to Guangming\'s earlier life (as blindness slowly encroaches on him, and he seems doomed never to find a wife) and also the younger years of Shuoshuo (as his mother and crippled elder brother all pitch in to help raise her). The thread which binds together the various short scenes, both past and present, is the mystery of who Shuoshuo\'s mother\'s was: the girl herself says "I have no mother" and the whole family spins stories in answer to her questions.
Performances are earthy and realistic, and there\'s excellent chemistry between the young Zhu Jiani as Shuoshuo and the elder Cheng Taishen as Guangming, especially in the city scenes. As the elder, more angry brother, Liu Yi is believable, while Liu Huiyi, a Chengdu theatre actress, quietly anchors the film as the aged mother who gave birth to the two impaired, frustrated men.
Though it\'s not important to the story (which has a timeless quality), the exact location is never specified. The film was shot in the Wudang Mountains,northwestern Hubei province, but most of the cast speak in Sichuanese dialect, which gives the movie a specially emotive quality of its own.