The Fire in Her Eyes

By RICHARD CORLISS

TITLE: THE STORY OF QIU JU

DIRECTOR: ZHANG YIMOU

WRITER: LIU HENG

THE BOTTOM LINE: China's great renegade auteur spins a shaggy Pekingese tale about a strong woman enmeshed in Red tape.

One man can represent a national cinema -- and an entire nation -- to the world. Ingmar Bergman was such a filmmaker. Any Bergman movie was uniquely personal, but his artistic stature was so towering that audiences saw, in his dour wrangling with elemental issues, a map of Sweden's emotional landscape.

Today Zhang Yimou is China's ambassador to sophisticated moviegoers. He is a world-class artist who gives his films (Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern) heartbreak and visual grandeur. But people do not see Zhang's films so much as they read them, like fortune cookies, for signs and omens about the interior life of a forbidden country. Forbidden to him as well: the Chinese authorities have withheld release of some of his films. And yet Zhang still works in his homeland, against all odds and with great grace. Just like the heroine of his spare new film parable.

In a remote northern province, the village chief (Lei Lao Sheng) has lost his temper and kicked a man (Liu Pei Qi) where it hurts. But Qiu Ju (Gong Li), the man's wife, is hurt mainly in the pride, and she resolves to get satisfaction for this slur. The local public-security bureau agent, Mr. Li (Ge Zhi Jun), a reasonable politician in a hopeless situation, tells the chief to pay Qiu Ju and her husband 200 yuan in reparation. When she comes to the chief for the payment, he strews 20 10-yuan notes on the ground. "You'll bow your head to me 20 times," he snorts, "and then we'll be even." She leaves the money where it is, saying, "I'll decide when we're even."

Thus begins Qiu Ju's sad pilgrimage through the endless labyrinth of the Chinese bureaucracy. She petitions the People's District This and the Revolutionary Intermediate That. She seeks the help of a professional letter writer, who promises to destroy the village chief by writing a "merciless" letter. (He tells Qiu Ju he's written six of these; two of the recipients were subsequently shot, he says, and four got life sentences.) To impress the officials, Qiu Ju gives them fruit and buys an ill-fitting striped jacket that unfortunately makes her look even more like a hick chick from the sticks. All to wipe that smirk off the village chief's face -- and to save hers.

That face is worth saving, since the title role is played by the radiantly sullen Gong, who has starred in all of Zhang's features and who was declared best actress at last year's Venice Film Festival for this portrayal. As Qiu Ju or Ju Dou, as the bride in Red Sorghum or the balky mistress in Red Lantern, Gong has brought life and body to the director's ethereal cinema style. The Story of Qiu Ju relies even more on her personality than the team's earlier films. There Gong was swathed in luscious silks and period exoticism; here, in a glamourless contemporary role, she is swaddled in a down parka and saddled with a story whose contours are evident from the start. The drama is all in her dark eyes, where the fire of rebellion burns.

As film art, Qiu Ju is no match for the wondrous Red Lantern. But as a rare glimpse into the last communist monolith, it has the fascination of an individual's -- and a People's -- tragedy.