Touching & Compelling
sayakeren | Jakarta, Indonesia | 06/05/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Deshen (Ekin Cheng) was an artist and was the boyfriend of Man-er (Karena Lam). Deshen has been telling Man-er about this one landscape that has been showing in his dream in which he felt so familiar but has no idea where it is. Both of them agreed to find the place in his hometown, Qingdao. Unfortunately, Deshen passed away before the search happened. Man-er felt she must find the place to replace Deshen. She went to Qingdao to find the landscape her boyfriend drew but months after that she found nothing.
In Qingdao she met with Xiaolie (Liu Ye), a postman who's very kind-hearted and tried his best to help her finding the floating landscape and soon he found no landscape but his deep feeling towards the always-sad girl, Man-er. Man-er could not deny that somehow she felt so at ease with Xiaolie, but her 'debt' to find the landscape kept her a distance from Xiaolie. But not long after that, Man-er felt afraid of finding the Floating Landscape because...she knew if she finds it, she must leave the region, and somehow she felt that actually she doesn't want that to happen...
A very touching story talking about simple and ordinary life of people living in suburb China: how they deal with their surrounding, how they face challenges in life (a sub-plot was talking about how an old lady faced the death of her beloved husband), how people are so attached to their past that they cannot move on, and so forth. You'll find an ordinary life in this extraordinary story plot, guaranteed!"