WEEKEND PLOT
Mi Yu Shi Qi Xiao Shi
Mistrust, a missing person and a floating dressmaker's dummy dominate the weekend of five Beijing friends who spend a summer weekend on the banks of the Yangzhe. Yudong, away from his wife's gaze, is stirred at the arrival of high-school sweetheart Jin Xiao-Bei. The appearance of said dummy, with a note 'Love you till I die' attached, sparks a spate of mysteries and tensions between them. A hit at Rotterdam, Pusan and Hong Kong Film Festivals.
"Unlike many other young Chinese directors, who elect for a harsh, neorealistic mood, in his second film, Zhang Ming creates a very different atmosphere... Just as in his debut Rainclouds Over Wushan, in Weekend Plot Zhang used beautiful locations on the banks of the Yangzhe River. In a very subtle way, Zhang investigates the vague despair and uneasy feeling of life that is hidden under the surface of a new generation of Chinese. The young cast beautifully portrays that new China of consumers who are in search of pleasure, just like their western counterparts." - Rotterdam International Film Festival
Zhang Ming (born in Sichuan Province, China) is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy where he now works. Rainclouds Over Wushan (1996) was his first feature film. In 2000 he won the Hubert Bals Fund Award at the 5th Pusan International Film Festival for the script of Weekend Plot.