Blind Mountain (2007)

A young woman is kidnapped and sold to a villager in the mountains.

Director:

Yang Li

Writer:

Yang Li

Stars:

Lu Huang, Youan Yang, Yuling Zhang

3 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Lu Huang	...	Bai Xuemei
Youan Yang	...	Huang Degui
Yuling Zhang	...	Ding Xiuying
Yunle He	...	Huang Decheng
Yingao Jia	...	Huang Changyi
Youping Zhang	...	Li Qingshan
Ai Chen	...	Chen Chunli
Hui Huang	...	Hu Xiaoxiao
Yang Li	...	Wu Maoxiang
Wenguang Zhu	...	Police Officer Zhu
Yang Fan	...	Police Officer Sun
Zhishun Yuan	...	Bai Yanfeng
Xiaoli Zou	...	Village Chief
Yi Quan	...	Huang Jianshe
Li Dai	...	Huang Jiaxing

Storyline

China, the 1990s. In villages where female babies are drowned, there are few young women to marry the men and bear more sons. Families buy wives - girls lured from the city. Bai finishes college and accepts a job in a remote mountain village harvesting herbs. It's a ruse: she's sold to a peasant family. She's indignant; the parents hold her so the son can rape her. She tries to run away; she's beaten. Other women kidnapped a few years before, now with children, tell her to comply. She continues to try to escape. She writes to her father, smuggling letters to the mailman. She obtains a bit of money. The village is without pity, except for the teacher. Can he help her? Anger mounts.

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Plot Keywords:

village | mountain | escape | teacher | villager | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Director Cameo: The recruiter at the beginning of the film is impersonated by Li Yang.

User Reviews

Well made real life drama

In the early 90s, a young woman, Bai Xuemei, a recent college graduate, travels to the countryside of rural Shaanxi province believing she is going to start a job selling medicine to rural peasants. After arriving at remote village, she is drugged and awakes to discover her identity papers have been taken and she is the prisoner of her new 'husband', a contemptuous, uneducated peasant who has bought her for 7000 yuan. Bai protests and tries to leave but is forcibly restrained by her new 'family'. In fact, her new husband's parents assist him in restraining her so that she can be raped. Eventually Bai manages to escape her confinement and flees to inform the local police and is brought to the village chief. He, however, won't help her without proof (identity papers) or a refund of the 7000 yuan and returns her to custody of her would-be-husband. Later Bai meets other prisoner wives who share her fate but have long given up their will to escape. Horrified, as the seriousness of her predicament sinks in, she makes more desperate attempts to escape.

Incredibly enough, the film is based on the real stories of women who were enslaved this way in rural China - the demand for wives brought about by the imbalance of male and female children in the countryside. For once an idyllic, isolated rural Chinese village is portrayed as a place of ignorance and malevolence and a place to escape from. Amazing acting from the cast of non-actors who play themselves very convincingly. The only disappointment might be Bai herself who, as a college graduate, doesn't seem to plan her escape attempts very well.

Details

Country:

China

Language:

Mandarin

Release Date:

12 March 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

Blind Mountain

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$3,676, 16 March 2008

Gross USA:

$13,164

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$43,347

Company Credits

Production Co:

Kun Peng Xing Yun Cultural Development, Tag Spledour and Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

95 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1