UFO in Her Eyes (2011)

A mysterious Chinese peasant woman one day claims she has seen a UFO, from that day the world turns to upside down. The film is a metaphoric political satire on post-Mao era China.

Director:

Xiaolu Guo

Writers:

Xiaolu Guo (screenplay), Pamela Casey (screenplay)

Stars:

Ke Shi, Udo Kier, Mandy Zhang

Cast

Cast overview:
Ke Shi	...	Kwok Yun
Udo Kier	...	Steve Frost
Mandy Zhang	...	Chief Chang
Y. Peng Liu	...	Bicycle Repairman
Zhou Lan	...	Teacher (as Z. Lan)
Massela Wei	...	Secretary Zhao
Li Dou	...	Old Kwok

Storyline

A Beijing Police officer comes down to Three-headed-bird village to investigate the UFO sighting. Through his point of view, the village's collective portraits are depicted and their tragic destiny unfolds. What kind of future the villagers face, what future China heads to?

---

Plot Keywords:

f rated | 

---

Genres:

Comedy | Drama

---

Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

Germany

Language:

Mandarin English

Release Date:

13 June 2012 (USA)

Also Known As:

Azt gondolta UFO

Company Credits

Production Co:

Corazón International, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), ARTE

Technical Specs

Runtime:

110 min

Color:

Color Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Chief Chang: We China used to circle around Soviet, now we circle around USA.

---

Soundtracks

Wild is the Wind
Performed by Udo Kier

User Reviews

Nice idea, but deserves a much better script

I saw this film as part of the Ghent filmfestival 2011. The announcement reminded me vaguely of All Your Dead Ones (Carlos Moreno, 2011), where local politicians take advantage of a mysterious phenomenon in their village, and use it for their own purposes. In other words, satire is intentional. This seems the case in this film too. Several dignitaries make their appearance, being their pompous selves. Bystanders like us cannot take them too seriously. We can only wait for their house of cards to collapse in the end. Contrary to aforementioned All Your Dead Ones, the basic idea is not exploited fully here, rather the opposite. I can imagine, however, that the underlying book did a better job (assuming here).

All in all, the 110 minutes that this film takes, are not well spent. The idea is nice, but it deserves a much better script. In spite of all the effort put in landscapes, props and mass scenes, there is not enough interesting material to keep our attention span all the time. And as far as casting and acting is concerned, satire fails here big time with a majority of personages that are not believable, due to over-acting or being too one-dimensional. The only thing I could do when leaving the theater was scoring a 1 (lowest) for the audience award. Needless to say that I was disappointed and had expected something different from the given ingredients.