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A young girl, a child really, lays helplessly on her wobbly bed, while a
man copulates repeatedly on top of her, from early afternoon to night. With
half-opened eyes, she looks through her red transparent scarf at this man who
is her hope of returning home. Trapped in the midst of the destructive
Cultural Revolution, Xiu Xiu, a girl in her teens, is sent out of her
city, Chengdu, to work in the countryside. This short, but very poignant film
captures the hopelessness during China's most turbulent decades. The Cultural
Revolution destroyed family ties and ripped a whole generation of kids from
their relatives. This film is part of the Cultural Revolution's story.
Xiu Xiu starts off as an innocent schoolgirl, ready to do her duty for
China. She excitedly receives her uniform and proudly ties a red scarf around
her neck. Xiu Xiu isn't naive, she knows what men hint to her and it repulses
her. When Xiu Xiu is ordered to go to Tibet to herd, Lao Jin, an experienced
herder, takes on an almost paternal air with her. Xiu Xiu is a
sharp-tongued thing, but we forgive her because she's young and still has
dreams.
But eventually, Xiu Xiu wants to return to Chengdu, to her family. A
peddler tells her that almost all the pretty girls have gone home. So begins
Xiu Xiu's descent from innocence to selling herself for a ticket to Chengdu.
Throughout it all though, somehow, she manages to preserve a pureness about
her, a childish aura that helps her cling to her hopes.
Set in practically the most picturesque spots of China, the film's
scenery, music, and superb actors appeal to our hearts and smoothly propel
the story to its tragic end. Only those who have been a part of the Cultural
Revolution can ever fully understand the emotional changes it wrought in its
citizens, but "Xiu Xiu: The Sent-down Girl" gives those of us who
only know the Cultural Revolution through study, a taste that I imagine to be
pretty close to the real thing.
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