In the Heat of the Sun

During the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, a group of army children whose fathers and teachers are all elsewhere roam an emptied city. Ma Xiaojun learns to pick locks, sees a photograph of a woman in one of the flats he enters, and spends that summer following her. The film is not interested in the revolution. It is interested in the unreliability of memory: the narrator, now grown, keeps interrupting to correct his own account, says a scene did not happen that way, then shows it again. In the end the film argues about what was invented, not what occurred. The form is hot and bright: yellowed images, summer sun, rooftops and empty streets. The opposite of the grey aesthetic of Chinese films of the period. It is Jiang Wen's first film as director, from Wang Shuo's novel. Xia Yu won Best Actor at Venice for the role and became the youngest actor ever to take that prize. The film won six Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan. Who it is for: viewers who like unusual angles on the Cultural Revolution and stories of adolescence. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a political account of the period. The film keeps politics in the background and its narrator's games can tire some viewers.